Founder had noticed something about me. I had been thinking of asking to take part in the detox program offered. He approached and said,
“I think you should partake in our detox program.”
Detox began with a bowl of sliced banana with shredded coconut doused with honey, an ancient recipe dating back to the ancestral days of the region. Its purpose is to prepare the stomach for the emptiness that would come. Lunch was a salad of beetroot, carrot and shredded coconut, grown organically on the farm. Dinner was the same as every evening before – lentils and rice. I quite enjoy the flavours even though it’s the same dish every evening. It settles the stomach, preparing it for the night until morning.
I was consumed with thoughts of her. Of our past. Anger kept rising up. Ego banging at the door.
Enough! I pushed it off the step but it refused to trip.
“Remember the pain! Dwell on it! Remember the lies! How can you let her get away with it? Pain must be inflicted on her as she has on us!’
I slammed the door.
At sunrise I’d make my way over to the yoga challah, set among the banana grove. I was escorted by countless butterflies, cattle egrets swooping down to dine with the cows, Ibis flying in noisily, fruit bats returning from a night’s hunt. Caterpillars morphing into cocoons.
Their next stage in life would be the beauty that comes with the power of flight. Trekking long distances, step-by-step across vast open spaces, danger lurking from every angle, consuming vast amounts of foliage to carry them through their chrysalis (pupa) period. And even then, they were still not safe until they emerged as a beautiful winged insect which in turn would be prone to the birds and bats that would snap them up mid-air.
They didn’t dwell on their past. They didn’t question whether life was better as a caterpillar, safer, more grounded. They didn’t question whether they’ve had enough leaves. They simply lived the moment.
The present.
But I couldn’t escape my thoughts. During meditation Ego would remind me of various incidents. It would play out a conversation, in the way that it would imagine it for me. I would sting her with the same venomous words that she used to sting me. I would make her feel small, as she did me. I would belittle and chastise her.
I would make her feel how she had made me feel.
No, I calmly shut the door in Ego’s face.
I would not be like her. I would not scorn. I would not give her pain. I had to find compassion and love, even though Ego was screaming from behind the door, banging on
it, “She doesn’t deserve it!”
Everyone deserves love and compassion, even war criminals and dictators.
She used to say that she didn’t deserve me – that I was too good for her. I wonder if there can ever be such a thing? Someone being too good? Why does that sentence even exist? Good is good, bad is bad and evil is evil. There’s nothing too much of it anywhere.
Either it’s there or it isn’t.
Either you’re good and your partner accepts it, or your bad and she might accept that too.
During yoga, as the sun warmed up the earth, dispersing the mist from the lake, awakening the birds, bringing about the day, I practiced, focusing on deep-breathing.
Yet, again, even during these self-reflective moments Ego would take advantage of my not being by the door and creep in through the window.
“Unleash us unto her!” it demanded. “Let me let us retake our power.”
I pushed it out the window, slamming it shut.
She was too scared to be honest. She behaved like a coward, as all liars and betrayers do. And it was all from fear. They say that when a partner betrays another, in a cheating fashion, it’s something that the partner being cheated on didn’t fulfil for the other. Something they provoked. I can accept that.
I can’t accept the way it was done. But I can’t control that or her reaction. I can only control mine. And I need to accept the way it has been done in order to heal. I need to find love and compassion. I need to be the caterpillar and morph into the butterfly so that I may spread my wings and fly – away from her, away from the pain, away from what was left behind, and not dwell on it.
I need to leave her be. Leave our story be and simply accept.
It is what it is.
It’s her birthday today.
Why should I care?
—
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