Day 16, Portugal (to Greece): Take the Stairs

 It’s my last day with my friend. Last night two of her friends joined us and it was a celebration. 

How fun to be across the world and have two other friends drive up as if meeting for coffee across the world. How lovely. 

But how drinky they were. How very drunk they got. How very in excess they felt. A gluten of laughter and wine - I wanted to apologize for the laughter and the space they were taking up, these ladies of life. 

To my surprise, every server we had thanked them for brining this energy and said, “Please come back! We love how much you are enjoying yourselves.” 

I find happiness for them, but it is not my life. This trip has shown me grace in appreciating the nature of my biological make-up. My nature (vs nurture).

My body wakes up early, so I curate a life that makes sure I find that agreeable. I don’t fight it by forcing myself to live a life that compromises feeling at my best when my body comes to life.

I’ve seen on this trip the choices I made early on that, appeared to me to be, unpopular or boring, and I’ve seen - appreciated - that I was brave enough to make them anyways. I thank younger me for trusting my intuition on what was best for me. 

A thought came to mind today: Those that lack the burden of wisdom and accountability for themselves in this world are the privileged. 

Today’s people of tomorrow talk a lot about privilege. Like a number of other mistakes in their language of choice, they are wrong in how they see privilege. They would see me as privileged, yet I carried the burden of knowing nobody was going to do a god damn thing for me. They would have let me die on the streets if that was the choice I made. It doesn’t really matter how pretty that street is,  how pretty your deathbed is or is not, death is death. To wake up and understand with the grace of surrender and learn that you and you are alone are accountable to you is the accomplishment of a lifetime and not easily won. 

Sure there are those that are born into a different type of privilege, such as money, but I can imagine that their life’s pain is relative. We all struggle with connection to a life lived well. 

I don’t live a life of privilege. I am well because I life a life aligned to my highest nature. That is not a privilege, it is the name of the game. It is what I am supposed to do. It is… my job.  

My dream right before waking up today was me getting into an elevator. On that elevator was a man, probably my age, he had a husky, strong frame but looked like a easy going traveller type, casual business like. The door closed and he said, “What would you ask of me?”

Surprised, I responded curiously, “Sorry?” 

“We keep crossing paths,” he said, “there must be a reason for it, what is it that I can do for you?”

I found him interesting, intriguing. I had a delighted cosmic smile and I entertained his idea. He did look familiar perhaps? 

Then he moved towards me, I can recall is thin, navy blue puffy jacket with some white insignia on the left breast. He was tall and obviously stronger than me. He cornered me and said, although we had not met before, “I will call you…. [my name]” as he cornered me, as if he was my destiny. 

In the dream, in the elevator, I said, “oh fuck”

It was then I realized I hadn’t pressed the button for the floor I needed and that he had pressed the floor -1. As we arrived at that floor,  he pressed the stop button. I was stuck. 

I made a move under his arm to not be cornered, but I was still caged so he just calmly turned around, knowing he had his prey, and began to unbutton his pants. He knew what he wanted from me… and I knew he was going to shove that thing in my mouth.

I wasn’t so scared though. I began to press at my Apple Watch, trying to trigger the emergency function while wondering if we were down to low in this elevator to have service. And if there was no service, my brain was doing the math and I just calmly acknowledged the probability of outcomes with, “fuck…” because I knew the worst case scenario was that I going to endure yet another asshole fucking me - and that I would survive it. 

I don’t know quite what to make of this message. I did wake up with a big mental note of being aware of my surroundings (had he been following me around? How did he know my name so that he could pose as my cosmic destiny) and - at the very least - not taking any elevators.  Also, perhaps a gentle reminder that no man (or - no one, no other ) will be the key to my destiny. That’s a lie.