Chapter III

Choose carefully

(When trying to find myself meant loosing myself.)

As I was sitting on the terrace of our jungle home, surrounded by beautiful nature I couldn’t understand why I felt so empty inside. Not just empty but I couldn’t really feel anything at all.

I wasn’t sad nor was I struggling with depression. I knew too well what that felt like as I battled through it in my early twenties when I still lived in the UK. But that’s another story. This time around I just felt sort of numb emotionally and it really frustrated me mentally. I knew that this is not the real me, not the cheerful, life-loving, always-a-bit-too-excited me. So who was me? Why did I allow myself to sunk into this mental state?

One thing you probably need to know about me: I tend to live too much inside my head. Even though I would like to think I function based on intuition, that’s just a side effect of when I truly commit to working on myself. In reality I’m in a constant battle between logic and feelings. And by feelings I mean that little stomach-turning gut feeling we all have inside us that we know we should really listen to. Sometimes we refer to it as the voice in our head. See why it gets confusing?

Gut feeling = voice in our head. Thinking = feeling. Thinking vs feeling.

We separate the two when in fact they are the same. Depending on your belief system you might feel comfortable with one or the other. And a lot has to do with it in spiritual terms as well, sorry to break this to you. If you resonate more with consciousness, metaphysics, eastern philosophies you are most likely locate your “inner guidance” somewhere near your brain, your mind, your thinking. If you are more aligned with the principles of ancient teachings or mainstream religion then you’re likely to feel closer to that gut feeling ideology.

Let me say one thing as a disclaimer here: I definitely have no evidence on this theory, I haven’t done any research nor there is any scientific proof of this. It’s nothing but what that little something inside me is telling me. You decide if it is my gut feeling or the voice in my head. All I’m trying to tell you is that you don’t need to fully understand what that thing is. If it sits well with you, then go with it. Don’t care what others will think about it, no one else is going to live your life the way you do. It’s yours to play with.

So there I was, surrounded with palm trees, sunny days in winter time, watching monkeys jumping from one tree to another, yet I felt nothing. I have to tell you, I really tried. I tried to admire all of that, to notice the beauty in the little things, they were just not getting through to me. I had some kind of a shield that kept away joy from bursting through into my emotions. At the time I didn’t understand the reason, it took me about 4-5 months to be able to realise what was happening within me. Let this be a little reminder that life works that way. We tend to understand its events backwards, once they are in the past is when we truly get where certain things were leading us to or what they were teaching us. What I realised those crucial 4-5 months later was that my entire mindset was pulled into another state by the influence of an another human being. Unintentionally. He didn’t mean to bring me down with him however it still happened without me realising it at the time. Was it his fault? Not at all. I choose to be there and I allowed him to drain the fun out of me. Now I understand why but this is where this story gets important for you. What you surround yourself with will have a major impact on your life. Be it a friendship, a relationship, a situation, a job, a location, whatever it is, it will contribute to how you feel about yourself and how you look at life.

The good news is that you have all the power to remove yourself from certain environments. If something is not serving you, you can make adjustments to be where you really want to be mentally and emotionally. Is it scary? Hell yes. Is it worth it? Only if you want to have an enjoyable ride on this planet. So choose carefully.