📘 The Spaces in Between
I begged, bargained and pleaded to be allowed to share the Prologue of the book [work in progress]. I hope you like tornadoes.
There’s nothing scarier in the world than knowing something isn’t right, but having absolutely no idea how to uncover it. Except maybe, knowing what’s not right, knowing how to uncover it and then having no idea who you are once you do.
People live in fear. Whether they know it or not, they live in fear. They are not aware of their own power over the physical world.
As an adult I’ve been struggling with finding meaning and purpose.
I’ve always had this knowing that the world, life and possibilities are greater than what I’ve been told. Whenever I was asked what I wanted to be when I grow up, I would get excited. I didn't know the “thing” but I knew the concept.
Whenever I would think of it, I could feel the eagerness of finding out what form my concept would take. I knew I didn’t want a routine life. I was never bothered about getting married, never seen myself having children. All I ever wanted was to be around people, to share my being, help and love. Somewhere by the sea, where the sand is white and the palms are tall.
During those years, the only thing that fuelled the fire inside my belly were the movies. The stories, the actors, the worlds I would immerse myself in. I would go down the rabbit hole, trying to understand the meaning behind each narrative, every character and the vision of the creator.
As I grew older, I’ve started to piece together the essence of the people behind the screen. I knew that each character they portrayed, every story they wrote or every movie they brought to life, held a piece of their own soul and explored a part of them unfamiliar to themselves. It’s as if, by creating this art form, they were sharing with the entire world personal and vulnerable parts of their being. I now know that, the reason why I felt so deeply connected with that world was because it showed me that I wasn’t a freak of nature, an isolated anomaly, the odd one out.
I was, and still am, in love with connecting the dots, uncovering hidden connections, putting all the pieces together and adding more as time goes on, and getting to know people’s essence through exciting and unconventional perspectives.
I love the duality of films. How, on one side they entertain us by offering a new world to experience and, on the other side, they introduce us to a new way of being, a new point of view, a new perspective, a new challenge. For me it’s a way to open my mind, to widen my point of view and to find new ways to think or see things. It’s beyond exciting.
Ever since I can remember, I have seen myself as part of that world. I didn’t know how, but I've always wanted it. I felt like I had something to share, some value to provide.
When people started to actually pay attention to my answers, somewhere around my teens, I was told I had to get serious about my life or I’d be left behind. The fun curiosity I had in my heart, would gradually turn into a growing ball of anxiety in my tummy. When faced with the seriousness of the matter, I had to have answers, I couldn't just stay curious, I had to have a plan. And the plan had to be serious. This is real life we’re talking about.
I had to choose something I could support myself with. I couldn’t chase impossible dreams, I had to be practical. I had to be in line with the world, to have a respectful job, leave my small(ish) town and make a name for myself but only in something that would make people say Wow. Something that would make my parents look good and me a lot of money.
I didn’t know it then, but what I really wanted was freedom. Freedom to dress how I like without being stared at, freedom to speak my deeply contemplated thoughts, freedom to express my energy inits natural state. Something you don’t have in an ex-communist country in Eastern Europe.
Romania wasn’t chillest culture to grow up in, and from what I know from around the world, it wasn’t the worst either. Even so, having spent my entire life with my mind somewhere in the future, where I can be myself and not stand out, led me to never know what it’s like to be present, to feel and know myself. I was always at least ten steps ahead and it made me feel like I was skipping the fundamentals in life.
Here I am today, in my 30s, lying on my sofa in my own little, cosy home, by the fire, under a fluffy blanket, looking out the window to St Michael’s Mount, surrounded by the sea.
I have lived my entire life as a deer in the headlights and didn’t even know it.
Up to this moment I’ve been struggling with finding meaning and purpose. I was never able to stand still and listen to myself. I was always going a million miles an hour, mindlessly chasing what I thought I wanted and needed. The jobs, the boys, the people, the courses, the places, the hobbies.
When my body gave up one Friday morning, two years ago, I was forced to confront the thick wall of fear I have been building for the last 30 years, without knowing what lay on the other side, or even if there was another side at all. For all I knew, I would be trapped in that wall, losing oxygen and light, sinking deeper and deeper as I was battling to carve through it.
I’m not entirely sure I am fully on the other side, but I do know I can see it. Not only that, I can feel it.
Looking back at all I have experienced, what I’ve documented and what I lacked in my journey, I feel a profound need to share.
I feel the urge to share it all because all of the things that made me anxious, sad, depressed, isolated, feeling unworthy and incomplete were the things disguised as real life, as that’s how the world works, as these are the rules of society and you have no power over them. And because these beliefs are part of our foundation, our starting point in life, my mind didn’t even register as being something that requires attention, something I can change and make them work for me. It continuously searched for solutions and answers above the ground. I now know that those are coping mechanisms and they are not sustainable.
What truly gave me hope, were the voices I found that spoke to the parts of me I thought were unique or fucked up. Those voices hit hard because, for the first time in my entire existence, the most rejected parts of myself could relate to someone else and so, I was able to discover the courage I had inside, even when I was terrified. I was able to alchemise my fear into curiosity.
Someone out of this world said “All pain is resistance to the natural self.” And it took me a while to fully understand what they meant. And when I did, I realised that I already knew what they meant. Because every time I felt pain and unease, when I asked myself Why? and took the steps back, I traced it back to a specific moment, experience, or person that instilled a belief or a fact in me. It was one I didn’t agree with at the core but, for reasons such as fear of abandonment, fear of being alone or too different, or simply being too young to stand by my instincts, I accepted it.
The moment you know, you can't unknow.
And that’s the purpose of this narrative. To say the same things you’ve heard and seen around the bookstores, podcasts, TikTok and Instagram in a different way, using different words and experiences. Because if there’s one thing I’ve learnt (that I didn’t even know it was a thing in the first place), is that the same information presented in various ways can resonate uniquely with different people. The words, the energy behind it and the way it’s takes place in real life have the power to evoke different reactions and strike different cords with different people. I know it’s true because that’s what happened to me.
This narrative is also a way for me to share the invisible cage I put myself in and the monsters in disguise I have allowed inside my mind. It’s a way to share how I have noticed the cage for the first time and how I let the monsters go.
Maybe by doing so, there is a chance my voice is one that a rejected part of you can hear; the one that feels too different, too fucked up, the one you bury deep down because no one will understand or love, the one you hate but have to bear because you have no power over it.
Maybe there is a tiny detail in my mistakes, my accomplishment, realisations, people I’ve hurt and people who have hurt me, that causes your first domino to fall.
And if there’s not, you get a manual of what not to do.
What if my oversharing can help you realise what you already know? You already know what is true for you and what is not? You already know who you are, what you desire and what your passion is?
What if you realise that beneath the fear of going against the grain, of losing everything and everyone, of being abandoned and ending up alone; beneath the lack of energy to think about what you want, the absence of motivation to even dream of a more fulfilled, richer, lighter life, let alone pursue it; beneath the lack of inspiration and the survival mode you might be in, beyond all variations of the thought “When I do this, I will be able to enjoy that” If you simply stand still and breathe, you realise that you already know;
And most importantly, you realise you have the power to create anything you desire.
I started by saying that I have been struggling with knowing what my purpose is. I feel I have found one.
Maybe my purpose is to share my whole being; all extremes of how I thought and felt, all the different versions of myself and my entire journey to discover what really lies within me, who I really am. Maybe my purpose is to show my work to the class and share how I found the "it" I was missing because I know you have one too.
Maybe that’s why I feel so profoundly deep when, in comparison to the world, I haven’t experienced true horrific things. I haven’t experienced war, physical or sexual abuse, racial injustice, poverty.
I instead experienced emotional abuse, criticism, silent treatment, abandonment, shame. Things I thought were absolutely normal and not at all connected with how I live my life. I think this type of trauma is so fine, so hard to identify, especially as we get older, but many, if not, most of our behaviours and belief systems come from it.
These wounds essentially lead our lives because this version of ourselves is so engrained in your brain from such a young age, we don’t even know it’s happening.
I think and dare to make the statement that, this is the kind of trauma that every single person on this planet experiences. And every single person can let go and become free of it.
If we cannot find the courage to become self-aware and heal part of ourselves, we will unknowingly continue this auto-destructive cycle, passing on these beliefs, emotional abuse, criticism and shame to generations to come.
It’s as if we are a picture made from millions of pieces of puzzles. Most of it is put together for you, by your parents, family, friends, community and so on. You spend your life fitting the rest of them but, on the way, you uncover other pieces that do not fit. It makes you realise that the picture is bigger than what you initially thought. You then start gathering and fitting in those new pieces, and then the same happens, new pieces, expanding picture, and you do the same, over and over again. If you carry on, you end up with a completely different picture than what you initially had. Bigger, more complex, clearer and with brighter colours. One that speaks to your soul more coherently and lights the fire in your heart.
The trouble is, most of us are too afraid to see beyond the initial picture because it’s threatening what we know our person and reality to be. When we uncover the stranger pieces, we bury them under the sofa, never to look at them again.
Most of us are afraid to question who we are and so, we will stay within this first picture, even if it’s causing hurt, anxiety and depression. Our brain will always choose familiarity, even if that familiarity means suffering.
Without realizing it in the moment, for years I’ve documented the journey of my mind, as it was fighting to keep me in my comfort zone, leading me to choose everything but the one thing that could alleviate my pain and suffering. Throughout this book, you can observe me shifting from one extreme to another, erratically and without intention, only to find myself in the same dark and unhappy place, and finally reaching a point of balance where lessons have been learned and wounds have been healed.
What follows is a collection of journals written either in the moment or about the moment.
The chapters dated are such journals, written by the picture of me with missing puzzle pieces.
The ones undated are written by the biggest picture of me I have discovered so far.
The narrative is split into four parts: Stoned & Honest, Love or Attachment, Late Night Talking and Balance, each part representing approximately one year.
It starts with the realisation and quick ignorance of being numb and disconnected which leads to a breakdown, progresses into marriage breakdown, culminates in reconnecting with my first love, awakening deeply buried desire and passion, and finishes with reflections, revelations and life philosophies.
Throughout I do not hold back, I share real experiences, elaborate thought processes, spicy intimate details, quick decisions and costly mistakes, all aimed to show how easy it is to create our lives without intention.
I hope you love tornadoes.
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