Category: Meandering Thoughts

My brain and
heart divorced

a decade ago

over who was
to blame about
how big of a mess
I have become

eventually,
they couldn’t be
in the same room
with each other

now my head and heart
share custody of me

I stay with my brain
during the week

and my heart
gets me on weekends

they never speak to one another

– instead, they give me
the same note to pass
to each other every week

and their notes they
send to one another always
says the same thing:

“This is all your fault’

on Sundays
my heart complains
about how my
head has let me down
in the past

and on Wednesday
my head lists all
of the times my
heart has screwed
things up for me
in the future

they blame each
other for the
state of my life

there’s been a lot
of yelling – and crying

so,

lately, I’ve been
spending a lot of
time with my gut

who serves as my
unofficial therapist

most nights, I sneak out of the
window in my ribcage

and slide down my spine
and collapse on my
gut’s plush leather chair
that’s always open for me

~ and I just sit sit sit sit
until the sun comes up

last evening,
my gut asked me
if I was having a hard
time being caught
between my heart
and my head

I nodded

I said I didn’t know
if I could live with
either of them anymore

“my heart is always sad about
something that happened yesterday
while my head is always worried
about something that my happen tomorrow”
I lamented

my gut squeezed my hand

“I just can’t live with
my mistakes of the past
or my anxiety about the future”
I sighed

my gut smiled and said:

“in that case,
you should
go stay with your
lungs for a while”,

I was confused
– the look on my face gave it away

“if you are exhausted about
your heart’s obsession with
the fixed past and your mind’s focus
on the uncertain future

your lungs are the perfect place for you

there is no yesterday in your lungs
there is no tomorrow there either

there is only now
there is only inhale
there is only exhale
there is only this moment

there is only breath

and in that breath
you can rest while your
heart and head work
their relationship out”

this morning,
while my brain
was busy reading
tea leaves

and while my
heart was staring
at old photographs

I packed a little
bag and walked
to the door of
my lungs

before I could even knock
she opened the door
with a smile and as
a gust of air embraced me
she said

“what took you so long?”

Poem by John Roedel

You presented yourself to the world end of December 2019. At the time you were merely an insignificant blip on our news page. By end of January you had become one of these ‘far-from-my-bed-shows’: we looked at it, half amazed, half amused (crazy Chinese eating pangolin, what’s new?!). A bit freaky yes, but still, nothing to alarm us and so, we went on with our normal lives. “More people die yearly from the flu. What’s the fuss really?”

Today, April 5th, we have worldwide 1,133,681 confirmed cases, 62,784 confirmed deaths, 209 countries affected and we are still counting. You are no longer an insignificant blip on our news page, you unapologetically dominate our daily news.

You may be tiny, but you sure do deserve your crown. Just look around the world, you got us all on our knees – our economies included. You truly pulled off a magnificent trick: you managed to blindside us , even though we clearly saw you coming. You must have chuckled seeing our arrogance, waving the threat away.

We thought by being the richest and the strongest, we would always be okay. We worked hard to reach our goals, not hesitating to source our needs across our borders and when we saw that the problems we caused elsewhere came knocking on our door, we quickly waved our nationalist flags.
In our never ending pursuit of more, better, faster, we chose to ignore the warning signals Mother Nature sent us repeatedly, thinking we’d still have time. Besides, we would surely deal with it when the problem is really there. After all, we’re super smart, right?
Yes…. we preferred to close our eyes and dance to our favorite tunes on our own little private playlist.

But then you decided to come to our party and you were not picky in choosing your dance partner! You’d tango with anyone of us, gliding from one pair of hands to the next one. “I am here, do you see now?”, you whisper in our ear while tightening your grip to the point we have difficulty breathing. And slowly our eyes are opening.

We find ourselves with a renewed respect for doctors, nurses and other medical personnel. We are silently, somewhat ashamed, acknowledging the valuable work of garbage collectors, school teachers, supermarket and shop workers, maids. We start planting again in our gardens, we rediscover the pleasure of cooking our own meals, we carefully avoid wasting food…..
We have come to the realisation that what is getting us through confinement, is not the money in our bank account nor the swimming pool in the garden. It is plain simply social contact. We feel the need, not only to talk, but to see each other and experience the satisfaction of helping each other.

Dear Covid-19, you sneaky little bastard, I hope you will soon leave. Personally I have never been a fan of dancing the tango, it makes me dizzy. But I do love the feeling of close contact and passion. I truly hope we all will hang on to that feeling long after you’re gone and resist falling back in our old habits of dancing to our own individual tunes with our eyes closed.

Today marks the end of years being the sole occupant of the house I live in. As much as I have treasured these years of total freedom, I am thrilled at the prospect of my love of 2 years moving in with me today. Even the fact that it also means opening my home to his teenage kids every other 2 weeks does not diminish the excitement. I know he is ‘the one’ with whom I want to grow older.

I have been struggling to find the right word to describe our relationship. We are not married but we are in a committed relationship with a vision that extends well beyond our golden years. We are currently both in our early 50’s and calling him my boyfriend just makes me cringe. He is not a boy anymore, he is a divorced father of two. But most importantly, my feelings for him run way deeper than the boyfriend stage.

In a family setting or when with friends it is easy. I refer to him as my love, my sweetheart… But what is the age appropriate term when I refer to him to strangers or in a professional setting?

Facebook calls it a ‘domestic partnership’. Oh my! Where do I sign the contract?
Partner feels a bit too generic and contractual. Life partner… ? Nah.
Love of my life? Too long. Lover? We are not occasional shag buddies! Husband is a term I sometimes use because it pretty much feels as if and it sets a clear boundary (although nowadays…). But it makes me feel like a fraud, especially when I get the question ‘how long have you been married?’. Well, we are not really, bla bla… Awkward. Soul mate? He is, but calling him that, simply does not fit my personality.

I have come to the conclusion that ‘my man’ is closest to what I feel. It has a mature ring to it and the ‘my’ makes it exclusive. The French equivalent ‘mon homme’ even has a nice romantic sound to it (then again, what does not sound romantic in French!?).

It is funny how these peak moments of true happiness almost always trigger in me a fear of losing it all. ‘What if I die just when I finally have found the one!?’ , I asked him dramatically last night. ‘Don’t worry’ , he said, ‘you will not die now. We will die together. When I fall asleep behind the wheel’.

My man!

As I live the last hours of 2018, I cannot help but review the past year in my head. It is something I do regularly though, not just on the 31^st December. To keep myself in check, I do this little exercise by asking myself one simple question:  “Am I still happy with what I spend my time on?”

Time is the most important asset I have, together with my health. Without time I cannot fully enjoy my health and do the magnificent things I know I am capable of and without my health, I risk reducing the time I have. And since I do not know how much time I’m given, I do not like to waste it!

Looking back on 2018 three events jump out:
1 – Meeting my new love – and still be with him almost one year later
2 – My solo journey around the world in 50 days, a truly awesome experience.
3 – Having my foster girls with me for two months which was a source of many lessons and insights on (m)otherhood.

I’m happy to conclude I have spent my time well, very few regrets on that side. The one regret I do have, is that I have somewhat neglected my health, something I intend to repair in the next few months.

To my direct family and friends I’d like to say: you are few, but very important and I have not always shown this. My apologies to you comes hand in hand with the promise to do better!

It is now time to bid farewell to 2018 and to welcome 2019! The new year promises an equally new direction. I have not yet worked out the exact path of this new direction nor its destination, but change is coming – that I am sure of.

Let’s stay in touch as we continue our travels through this wondrous thing called life. As always: make it count!

Love,

Nathalie

My parents’ house.
The country I was born.
That one place I can be my true self.
The place I live, work and have my social life.
The place the love of my life lives.
Wherever I lay my head…..

Home has different meanings to different persons. I moved 3 months ago for the 17th time since I left my parents’ house, covering 3 different countries and 10 different cities/villages. Not making the definition of home any easier to myself! I suppose that is the curse of living the life of an expatriate. Or is it?

Some expatriates never lose sight of what they call home. Their roots firmly anchored in their home country, they are eternal visitors in the countries they work. They only integrate up to a certain point, with their entire social life within the expatriates circle.

Then there are expatriates who seek to make their guest country their new home. They set out to discover and learn about the food, the customs, the traditions, the local language and they make friends outside the expatriates circle.

The first approach seems the easiest, as you simply stick to what is familiar to you. You still have to adapt to all that is different from your home country, but will find solace and comfort in being surrounded by people who speak your language and have the same frame of reference.

It also seems the least interesting approach as you risk missing out on new and potential amazing experiences.

The second approach is about letting go of the known and embrace the unknown. It is the approach I chose 14 years ago and at times it was far from easy. But looking back it has been a truly enriching experience that allows me today to enjoy the best of worlds. I have come to realise that home is not the building I live in. It is the food that comforts me, the twinkle in the eyes of my late dad, the music I fall asleep with, the smell of my dog’s paws….

My friend David described home as “mon kaz sé mon kér” – my home is my heart. I could not have said it better. Everyone and everything important to me, I carry in my heart. In addition, I have found that as long as I am in harmony with myself, I can live anywhere and call it home.

So here I was, freshly returned from my journey around the world feeling all warm inside because it had confirmed what I already suspected: the world is not a big scary and dangerous place filled with bad people only. Quite the contrary, it is my firm belief that the world is a beautiful place, filled with mostly good people.

This warm feeling ended abruptly when I came across a video in the news today that showed a group of people calling people from the LGBT community ‘saleté’ (filth) and ‘malpropre’ (impure) in the name of their religion. Right here in Mauritius. The paradise island. The nation that prides its multi-racial, -cultural and -religious population. Talking about a cold shower!

The group of people in question were manifesting against the ‘Marche des Fiertés’, the local version of a gay-pride parade. Everyone has the right to have a different opinion and to express this. It is called ‘freedom of speech’ and I respect this. However, insulting other people and especially, in the name of religion – that I cannot, do not and will not ever respect.

Every religion has its own version of Holy Scriptures: the Christians have the Bible, the Muslims the Quran, the Jews the Tanakh etc. I myself grew up with the teachings of the Bible. I remember the day I read a passage in the Bible that neatly explained how many slaves one could keep. As a child coming from an island whose history started with slavery, and is still today conflicted by that history, I was shocked and felt deeply confused. The same Bible that says ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself’ condones taking away someone’s freedom for no good reason?? The more I read the Bible the more I realised it is full of contradictions. To a point that I started to question whether God really inspired the authors of the Scriptures, or whether certain passages were simply added out of convenience by ‘ordinary’ men with an agenda.
Mind you, not only the Bible is filled with contradictions, the Quran too. And although I have never read the Tanakh, I can imagine it would not be different in there either. The world’s history and present day is filled with wars, atrocities and violence committed in the name of some religion, the same religion that teaches the exact opposite!

Coming back to the ‘Marche des Fiertés’. In my opinion it is about a group of people asking to be respected who they are at their core. To be free to be themselves without shame and/or repercussions. They do not hurt anyone, they do not insult or scream in other people’s faces that are different from them, they do not try to convince or force other people to ‘become’ like them (as if that would be possible). I therefore wonder what exactly it is the protesters are afraid of if not their own ignorance?

The world is portrayed as a scary and dangerous place filled mostly with bad people. It is not. It is mostly filled with ignorant people. Ignorance is a highly underestimated danger. It leads to intolerance which leads to the earlier mentioned atrocities, violence and wars. And, it is a powerful tool to those who seek power.

The world can be that beautiful place I witnessed over the past weeks if we make the effort to reach out to those who are different, to start conversations, to get to know each other instead of mindlessly gobbling up what other people (with their own agendas) write or tell us.

I sincerely hope that Mauritius will show its true colours. It is not red or blue or yellow or green. It is all these colours together.