The last five days at the farm go quickly and peacefully.
We fall into a routine of visiting the animals every day and the noise of these last years stops for a while as I find myself lost in the moments, accidentally grooming horses by hand.
Part of The Accidental Theory: A journey to freedom
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Nathan and I talk about the home we'll make one day, running through each species of animal we will have. Horses, chickens, ducks, a goat, cats and at least two Huskies. Perhaps more of them. The dogs will sleep on our beds and keep us warm in winter. Our pack.
I'll have time to bake cookies and take up knitting. Nathan laughs and tells me I'll be a granny for real then, with my hair in a bun and my woolen poncho to top it all off.
Through the cracks of these high gates...
a small bit of a new kind of dream creeps in.
I'd stopped dreaming altogether by the time I met the man who finally woke me up.
I'd stopped asking for anything at all.
We even had a short almost conversation about this one evening when he asked me to share my dreams with him. I had none to share.
Honestly.
Not one.
I told him it was my approach to spirituality that prevented me from dreaming. From having any desires of my own. For myself. I'd convinced myself that a higher power of some sort had better plans for me than I could possibly wish for myself. With outcomes that would serve the greater good far better than mine might.
I thought we humans too selfish and all too fallible to be responsible enough to wish, or demand, our own desires be fulfilled.
His watchful silence, when I shared my thoughts, didn't alert me to the fact that this may not have been the most honest or "woke" answer I could've come up with.
Denial is very convincing.
And convenient.
Now I think that, back then, I was just too scared to ask for anything at all anymore.
We must've talked about a gazillion dreams together on all those nights we didn't sleep enough. And there were many.
We talked about about everything and more, playing music, dancing and making love for hours on end. Imaginings became what ifs and solidified into a something we felt might be our future together. Two people who'd been through enough to probably warrant not bothering trying again. We were aware of this as well.
It felt, to both of us, a final go of it after a lifetime of bad choices, hurt and disappointment. We made more of an effort to make it good because of this, I think.
To see and hear each other as individuals. To compromise. To not repeat past mistakes. We still made plenty of them though. Just slightly different ones, perhaps.
Still, I couldn't get enough of him.
Even when he totally pissed me off.
We stayed.
Even when we strongly disagreed and outright fought about the ways of the world, its people and ourselves.
We stayed.
He taught me to talk. He taught me to talk things out honestly. Something I'd never learned to do in a family where awkwardness or acrimony was swept untidily under the rug.
And here's the thing...
it turns out that if you take the time to try and understand someone by actually listening to their experience of things fully and they do the same for you...
mostly there's little to fight about at all, really.
Just misunderstanding.
Perhaps it was because I had some years of recovery in the 12 Step Program behind me, and of practicing personal accountability because of this, that we managed to work through so much of our respective shit together.
Step 4: Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.Step 4 of the 12 Step Program
He was a strong personality and so am I. So you can only imagine some of the conversations. Yet, even when we fought like children, we were fuckin' funny about it. Mostly. We found ourselves so anyway. The banter was worth writing down in a book all of its own.
I even began to once-upon-a-life-ago.
It was that good.
But back to not being too scared to own your shit.
There's no way you can recover from anything without personal accountability. Of course. Because without this, you can't even see what may need changing for you to make any progress at all.
So the 4th Step is all about owning your stuff in absolute full, all out and only you. It takes some people years to finish off the 4th Step. Some procrastinate forever because of fear. Some never finish it because of the same, I guess. And some are never even willing to start.
It's never easy to see your own defects clearly. But I'll share something with you...
it is fuckin' interesting!
When you begin to see your motivation, thinking, reactions, behaviours and choices laid out like that in black and white...
and the clearly repeated patterns, despite all those negative outcomes...
it's also very liberating indeed.
You can stop doing things when you're finally able to see what you're doing a bit more clearly. The things that aren't working out for you so well, that is. There's also a part of that program where you figure out what your attributes are.
And I have to agree that this is the closest a person can get to proper humility.
Humility in the 12 Step Program speaks to honesty again, you see. It isn't about groveling and pretending to being subservient and meek. That's only more addict traumatized behaviour right there. And it's utter bullshit, quite frankly. Usually with an underlying motivation to manipulate people and outcomes again.
The truth is... we all have defects. But we also all have attributes and strengths.
Humility, in the 12 Step approach to walking in this world more peacefully, is about knowing yourself.
And the 4th Step really gets a person quite a long way towards actual self-acceptance. It's a vital part of the process... whether you want to do it with an expensive private professional as "shadow work". Or, freely gifted, by a fellow traveler who's already done the work themselves.
So yeah. We can go around pretending to be what we aren't and blaming everything around us for our woes. We can hand that worthless buck around. But the person we repeatedly end up hurting after all that effort to avoid ourselves...
is mostly ourselves.
Over and over again.
He chose to stop drinking as well when he met me. This man who woke me up.
He was my first "sober" relationship.
I sometimes wonder if the incredible connection we had, and the amazing personal growth and adventure that followed on from it, was because we were so sober and so aware of each other.
But, in truth, he also had a brilliant mind. That man. The most attractive thing I find in a human. A free thinker and fearless Seeker. Yeah. I was fascinated with him within a few messages and it only became stronger the more we unraveled together.
I've digressed and taken three steps sideways but that's what a great connection is, isn't it? A kind of dance.
Where was I?
Fuck.
Ah. We had a dream.
And then it was taken from us.
I think losing an intimate partnership is a death of sorts in many ways.
Losing a best friend. The person whose name you write down as your emergency contact. Someone you trust to leave your banking details with, to handle shit for you when you need to disappear into the mountains for three weeks to rest because you've worked yourself into another breakdown. I didn't know I also had a work addiction back then.
Your person, though. And lover. And friend. It's hard to lose. To let go of.
But you lose more than this.
There is the death of a dream as well.
And when you've spent so long not daring to dream and hope has only recently blossomed enough to allow you to think such things as dreams are possible again...
it takes an inordinately long time to move on when they are lost.
Well. For me anyway.
It's going on four years when, at this special place, a new kind of dream begins to be allowed to be dreamed.
Of a home of sorts again.
It doesn't really matter if it's meant to be pursued or not. It's the fact that it's another step away from the dream I've been fighting so hard to hold on to, that I'm aware of now.
I guess I'm healing a bit more.
I've been looking for accommodation for a long-term stay over season, for the last while, because prices are on the rise and Air BnB's are going to be filling up soon. December is approaching.
I've sent multiple emails out to places in a variety of suburbs. It doesn't matter which suburb we land in, really, because we're undecided about where to settle, so may as well have a look around.
Finally, during the last five days at the farm when I'm beginning to stress a bit, a room with an en suite and a kitchenette becomes available. It includes wifi, electricity and water. And the left over rent from my little two bedroomed, semi-detached in town will cover most of the cost. The rest of that is already gone to cover the bond on my mother's property. On which it is built.
I ask to book it until the end of January 2023 so that Nathan and I are covered for the holiday season. The landlady, however, demands I take it until the end of February. "It'll be too difficult to rent out in January." She claims. "I want a tenant who will take it for a three month rental minimum to make sure it's booked for the whole of season."
I'm unable to view the place in person, though. I'm on a farm, in Penhill Estate, the room is miles away and I don't have a car. An Uber ride out there is around R1400 to R1600 return. I just don't have the funds for that kind of thing right now.
The landlady sends me some photos and, because it's in Pringle Bay and I like the village, I accept her terms and sign up for the three months. It also helps that she's agreed to use my single-door fridge as collateral for the deposit which I'm unable to afford right now.
It looks small but neat with only a single bed. This doesn't bother me. I've been sleeping on a mattress on the floor for over a year now when Nathan visits. I'll work around it.
With lower costs to remove the financial stress of costs of accommodation, I can take a much needed break and enjoy some of the summer with Nathan at the seaside. Simplifying even more, for this opportunity, feels more of a relief than anything else.
The last time I had a break, or even took a weekend holiday from town, was in April 2019. I've been going non stop, trying to survive this shit storm since then. And I am tired.
When you start to stop running on Adrenalin, you finally feel how tired you really are. But I've mentioned this already, haven't I?
Did I tell you how tired I am right now, by the way?
I also start sending my CV out to local businesses, during the last days at the farm.
The plan is to use these three months to find steady part-time work, to rest a bit and to buy me time to set up my recovery services properly in the area.
Also to get me back into regular contact with actual live human beings, which I'm still avoiding because of the remnants of the PTSD. I also need to save for a car, to keep on traveling so far away from town and decent public transport, to see more of the Western Cape.
So that's the plan and the room is booked, with enthusiasm and relief, for the next step of rebuilding recreating a better life.
Eternal Seeker
Hardened Dreamer
Mother
Peaceful Warrior
Determined Dancer
and Stargazer
still...
Beyond fear is freedom
And there is nothing to be afraid of.
To Life, with Love... and always for Truth!
Nicky Dee
All images my own for this one. Original Aweh (meta Verse) illustration created with Photoshop. Original illustration used original source unknown. Gif created using Canva. All photo editing done with GIMP.
