Monday 11 November 2013

Thank-you Best Friend P

A year ago you were one of my friends who bled into the background of my world. One of many. We would laugh or chat or go for a pint after work. A year ago I couldn't have fathomed that you would help me through one of the hardest times of my life. That you would become my best friend. That you would accompany me though dreams I never thought I would see.

It was you who taught me that packing my feelings into little orange boxes and sliding them back to my subconscious was not dealing with my hurt, or a way of moving on from it. It was to you that I shared my first tears after I left.

It was you who taught me that no matter how damaged I felt, I could be loved. I was loved.

We did Iceland, this might be one of the most important string of moments in my life. You stayed up for hours through 4am texts; when I couldn't sleep you wouldn't either.

My world feels lighter, happier and brighter with you in it, and I never want to know a moment without you again. You're my Rock Best Friend P, my partner in crime. And one Heck of a Bestie.

Monday 4 November 2013

Iceland

I have taken some time to reflect.

On what my life is now. How I handle freedom without being careless. How I protect myself without caging my heart away forever. How I find Balance.

I mentioned a post or two ago that I was planing a trip, a trip I had been planning for years. 5 years to be exact.

Well, I took that trip. It was in Iceland that I finally found my center. Sneaking away for mere moments from my travel companion I sat on the shoreline of a glacial lake alone. The water a pristine reflection of the sky.

Ten thousand year old ice floated past me and seals played in the distance, uninterrupted by the presence of people. A few other tourists whisked past me, tripods out or the crunching of their boots in the distance, the disturbances faded the longer I sat there. If it weren't for Best Friend Pete at the top of the hill I may have stayed there all day.

What brought me total clarity as I took in the crisp Arctic air. The realization that all those days I dreamed about this place, Imagined this moment. When it was all I wanted. The moments when I thought "if I ever get to go...". Every play of the Icelandic tourism DVD, even though my husband told me it was stupid.  Those moments were not for nothing.

You see Iceland embodied every dream I had. It was the last one standing; the last thing I held on to. It was the only thing I thought about some days before I fell asleep from exhaustion after I ran out of tears.

It was the only place I ever felt that I NEEDED to go.

And right there at that moment it was real. Not only was it real so was everything in the last year. I sacrificed everything I had ever known for something that was better and exactly then, sitting on the pebbles at the shore of this amazing place I realized that moving past all of this hurt is going to bring me extraordinary things.

Iceland is just the beginning.