Yesterday morning I did what I would normally do. After hitting the snooze button a couple of times, I dragged myself out of bed, ate a bowl of cereal (even though I'm not really hungry first thing in the morning), downed a glass of orange juice, a pack of vitamins and extra Vitamin C, threw my hair in a ponytail and left my cold apartment for Spanish class. En route, I stopped at my favourite cafe, Cafe Caracas.
It's the tiny place I was telling you about, right on the corner of Provenca and something else... only about 3 or 4 blocks from class. The clientele are all either comedians or wanna-be comedians, because I have a good chuckle every time I go in. Maybe it's because the place is so small we all have to sit in close proximity to one another, or maybe it's the caffeine that makes everyone hyper and happy. All I know is that for the cost of a cafe solo, 1 euro, I start my day off right: Smiling.
My last private class with Alejandra Lopez, my spanish instructor.
http://www.learnspn.com/
Alejandra has been awesome, and I'm super impressed with how she stuck it out with me. She'd give me breaks after pounding it out with the difficult lessons, and go on to vocabulary or something fun like reading stories or periodicals. And then a day or two later she'd bring out the big guns again and have me work really hard at the concepts that are most confusing: specifically, the past tenses. Yesterday, I had her quickly run over the verb Gustar (to like), as it's completely unlike any other reflexive verb and it always confuses me. Then we started in with yet another tense to consider: the Subjunctive. I've been able to recognize when people are using the subjunctive and I can understand what it is and what it means when I read it, but I've never actually tried to use it myself. Turns out it is absolutely necessary and the Spanish use it all the time. In English we don't have a tense like this. In French and Italian they do, so that means they probably do in Portuguese as well. The Romanic languages. ugh. To make a long story short, if you ever want to consider taking Spanish lessons in Barcelona, she is the gal to go to! I will go back to continue classes with her anyday, and in fact we were talking about weekly Skype classes. Gotta love that Skype!
After class I walked home and really took it all in. The crowds in front of the Sagrada Familia, the construction and tourist buses. Then further down the street the endless cafes, bars, supermarkets, perfumerias, farmacias, joyerias... all the way home to the old vintage building on Calle de Corcega. I ran up the stairs and started packing with a fury. I hate packing. I'm not really good at it - I need to take a long time to decide how and where to put things and usually I'm the type of person to pack well in advance of things. I'm not a crammer - studying or packing under pressure has never worked for me. That's why I prefer to be organized ahead of time. But yesterday trying to stuff everything into two suitcases was ridiculous. The f-sharps were flying! Shoes were being thrown. My roommates were laughing at me. I thankfully got out the door with Lucas's help lugging my heavy bags all the way down the narrow staircase for me. Two hugs and kisses (on each cheek) later, and I was in a cab heading to Sants Estacion again, bound for Valencia. It was surprising to me to hear myself chat easily the entire way with the cab driver. Sometimes I think I've got my Spanish down pat, and other times nothing but stuttering, half-garbled words come out of my mouth.
I got myself and my two heavy bags, my backpack, my yoga mats, and a bag of groceries onto the train fairly easily, although not without stares from other passengers. Like what? You've never seen a fairy with more than one suitcase, or wha?? God. The Spanish do stare quite a lot - they don't hide their feelings at all. Not like us Canadians who hate to be caught staring and in fact consider it rude. I guess I'm somewhere in the middle now: I will let myself watch someone a little longer than I used to in Canada, but I still turn away at the last moment from blatantly meeting someone's eyes. I don't know why, I guess I just think that people's intimate moments with themselves are for them only. No one else has a right to it.
On the train I watched some American movie (can't remember the name) about Robert Kearns, the inventor that went through years of struggle trying to sue Ford for stealing his invention: the intermittent windshield wiper. It was cool. How they ever made a movie out of something so dry is beyond me. I understood probably 85% of it. It was dubbed in Spanish, and also had Spanish sub-titles which definitely helped. When I watch TV here in Spain, they talk so fast that I can only understand maybe half of it. The rest I have to interpret by watching body language, etc. Good editing always helps.
Probably about an hour into the journey, I started to panic. "What in God's name am I doing??" I asked myself. I also demanded a clear answer. Well daggumit. I'm trying to live my life without rules and restrictions. The more honest answer would be that sometimes I don't actually know why I do things, but just that for some reason, and in some unlikely moment, I choose to unlock the deadbolt I've had on myself. I wanted to be in Valencia and that is all I knew. I learned some time ago to let go of "how" things should come to you, and what they should look like. It was, and still is, hard to let go of that kind of control.
So now here I am. It is under the guise of a sweet man who, to me, seems incredibly free and unrestricted by society's rules. His roommates are cool (Paolo from Sardinia and Mabel from Espana), and we are all about the same age. Of course they only speak Spanish here, which in the long run will be a bonus for me. My room is huge, airy, bright, I have my own full bathroom, and guess what? I have a desk! Yes! Right now I am happily writing in a very comfortable upright position with the sounds of singing birds coming in through the open window. The trees just outside my window are gently moving in the breeze. Hmmmm.... does that sound familiar? The weather in Valencia is definitely warmer than Barcelona by about 3 or 4 degrees. It's 19 today (even though the WeatherNetwork.com says its cloudy and 14. Which Valencia are they talking about??), and much too warm for the winter clothes I've brought with me.
You would think that I would have been excited and giddy as hell when I arrived at my new home last night. But was I? No, of course not. That would have been far too simple. As I do, I had to analyze and release my thoughts, and move through some sorrow which continues to follow me, albeit not right on top of my heels any longer. Once again I started thinking of my ex- husband. I remembered how he always put up with my quirks, which were sometimes tiny and meaningless, but are still the true parts of a person that you get to know only over a long period of time of intimacy and commitment with one another. Like the fact that I always have to have a clean home so my feet won't get dirty , because padding around in my barefeet is such a simple, wonderful pleasure. I always have to make everything esthetic before I can relax, and he would totally put up with this little idiosyncrasy of mine, and in fact found my quirks quite humorous. He used to chuckle at me. So last night I started feeling the dread that still sometimes hits me and causes me to hunch over and clutch my stomach, sit or lie down, and do some breath work. It's crazy how within two seconds I can be instantly turned into a ball of mush. The remorse, the letdown, the lonliness, and the shock of realizing that I am "sola". I gave myself a few minutes on my own, and then put in an emergency Skype call to Mark to help me get through it (thanks for being online, Mark!). Manu could tell that I was struggling with some inner demon, and gently questioned what was going on for me. He wanted to know why the light was missing from my eyes. Trying to explain what I'm going through in Spanish is angonizing. I was making matters worse and getting more down on myself by the second. It was then that a magical Pisces took my self-inflicted burden from me. He hushed my rambling, and tenderly wrapped me up in his long arms and said "Look, you are as free here as you've always wanted to be. There are no restrictions". I defensively retaliated with "MY FEELINGS ARE VALID!! I need to feel what I feel so I can move on!!" He responded "Yes, your feelings are absolutely valid, and it is your choice to feel however you want. It is your choice." As his wise, deep brown eyes smiled at me and held me still for a moment, I had to admit he was right. I relaxed and started breathing again. I chose to let myself smile, giggle, and be playful again, and the light returned to my eyes.
There is something that happens to each of us once we hit about 41. It's what is called "Mid Life Crisis". It is very real. I hate the terminology of it, because although it definitely could turn into a crisis, it really is just a merging and alignment of planets, namely Uranus (individuality, uniqueness and freedom), Neptune (ideals and visions) and Pluto (psychological change and transformation), that causes each of us to go through something big at this time in our lives. The transits of these planets happen between age 38 and 44, depending on a person's natal chart. Simply put, Neptune and Pluto square (90 degrees) their original natal position. A square is condsiderd to be opposition, or inharmonious to other angles that are created amongst the planets, houses, and signs in your natal chart. Furthermore, Uranus comes to the exact opposite of it's original natal position, 180 degrees. Its like staring at yourself in a mirror and not at all liking what you see. These are larger, outer planets, and they can sit in these positions for many months. It's no-wonder that we think we're all in crisis! Depending on what we're doing and what we are attached to, or responsible for, during this time will make the difference in how we get through it.
My friend, (whose name I won't mention), is full of energy and joy de vivre, has been married for many years, and has three children to keep him from wavering too far outside of certain boundaries. He holds an executive position in a company and so he must always be focussed on the company's annual goals and objectives, and he travels all over Europe with these great responsibilities on his shoulders. He is deeply commited to his family and his career. He is, by society's standards, "successful". Yet he sometimes feels the sudden urgent need to shove it all aside and just run free, live life in a variety of ways that he's only ever dreamed of experiencing, and look for love somewhere else. These feelings have been resurfacing harder and faster as of late, and he now questions himself in a way he never has. It will ultimately be his commitment to his children that will keep him firmly in position, yet silently struggling with this major transition in life. Another friend in almost the exact same situation (he is the same age, he is successful in his career, has a wife, a child, travels tons with work, etc), is feeling that same uncomfortable and confusing urge to just let go of it all. He says he walks into the door of his family home every evening and wonders what the hell he is doing. He wants to find the meaning of true happiness, and knows that he has run his course in the way he has up till now been living his life. He says he feels like there is a ticking time bomb just waiting to explode inside of him. Yet another good friend of mine, someone I have always admired and looked up to in every way, is finding herself extremely unhappy and confused with her life, but she says she has no idea how or why she got to this place. She is wondering what she can do to find some peace and clarity, but no matter what she does she just can't seem to break through it. She feels constantly tormented and her struggle just seems to go on and on and on without any answers in sight.
The truth is that some of us actually wonder if we're going crazy during this enormously evolving period in life. We wonder why, when we're supposed to be so smart and worldly now at age 40, we just can't seem to figure it out? We feel as if we are in a rut, grasping at air, like there is something "wrong" with us. It is damn painful. In relationship, we are
forced to look deeply into ourselves to see how we have been restricting one another's freedom of expression. Fortunately, a lot of couples can communicate their needs and are able to alter their relationship to allow for more freedom and individuality. In my case, this mid life "crisis" (or maybe I should call it "opportunity"?) has revealed my patterns of dependence that I have to admit were limiting my creativity and spirit. For my ex, well, he honestly just couldn't stand the heat, and jumped out of the hot water while he still could. It was the only way he knew how to manage the overpowering forces that seemed to be caving in on him from all sides. When this "mid life crisis" happens, it hits hard and we have no other choice but to go with it. This undeniably forces us to transform ourselves, even if we didn't think we needed transformation. The transformation for me is turning out to be something I had never, ever imagined. I look and feel different than before. I have let go of many of my old ideals and beliefs, beliefs which I truly thought honoured me and where I wanted to go in life. The truth is that it is hard to re-shape yourself. It takes a lot of fucking work that can really get you down, and sometimes you do wonder what the hell is wrong with you.
From all of this though has come a deeper, wiser strength that I never knew I had. If you'd told me that when I was 41 years of age I'd be living in Valencia, Spain, I'd tell you that you were frickin' crazy. There are moments where I actually do sit down and comtemplate all that I've been through this year, and maybe some of you who are about the same age can relate to the absolute craziness in life right now. Yet here I sit at my little desk, in a sun filled, airy room, that I share with other similar adults from all walks of life and cultures, happily writing a blog. Of all things a blog. Something that is so easy for me to do but yet something I never gave much energy or credit to before. So if this mid life crisis thing is really just an opportunity for transformation, growth, and clarity, then BRING IT ON! Because after months of struggling with it, I can finally say I am ready for it all.
Charleen xo
