It’s over three months since I went on my epic journey overseas and started this blog and titled it the “Travels of my heart.” And so they continue…

I may no longer be challenged by foreign cities and unreliable transport systems but the foreign territories and finding my way to the next destination continues on an internal level. And believe me, navigating the heart’s journey is far more challenging than any unknown city’s roads…

Sometimes it seems as if I am staring at my life through a dirty windowpane. I get an urge to scrub the window clean as if this would make what is happening on the other side somehow become clearer. I am watching myself thru this grimy veil and wishing that it wasn’t really me there on the other side. I mean, I had a vision of how my life was supposed to look. I dreamt my dream when I was 14. I would be married by the time I was 24 and have at least 2 of the 4 kids I wanted by age 30. I would live in a lovely home with matching furniture and my husband would adore me and spoil me and give me everything I ever wanted. We would love each other like crazy, live happily ever after and grow old together.

Instead, here I am on the other side of the window, alone in a house that won’t let the light in. A house whose ceilings and walls close in around me when I’m not looking. Here I am, wondering what is going to happen to me next. Here I am looking and acting brave one minute and curled up and crying in the foetal position the next.

What a silly, naïve girl I was to believe in “happy ever afters”! I created an illusion for my life that reality just couldn’t deliver. I have always believed that people are essentially good and I still believe that. I know now though, that people can and will do things that are not so good. The stresses and strains of life can lead to internal turmoil and it is then that we are often not on our best behaviour. When the cracks appear, patience and tolerance wear thin and things get said that shouldn’t be said and can’t be un-said…It is then, when enough hurtful things have been said, that the tide turns on the relationship and the waves of anger and resentment crash onto the shore and an undertow of sadness takes you out to sea…

I rub a finger over the dirty windowpane and watch myself drift rudderless across this ocean. I trust in nothing but want to believe desperately that I am strong enough to withstand this storm. I know that brave independent woman that I became on my travels overseas is still within me, but right now she is hidden under an avalanche of doubt…