From Amsterdam, with love

THE WAIT

I am on my own, sipping a margarita in the lobby of a hotel in Amsterdam amidst lush carpets, low-slung leather sofas, and a group of young, loud, and cheerful Dutch people.

I am trying to hide my nervousness with a smile, while I excessively check my phone for a message.

As the wait for the guy I flew from Istanbul to spend the weekend with is getting uncomfortably long, I get a message from him.

"I won't be able to come today."

THE TUNNEL VISION

I notice my heartbeat quicken, my jaw clenching, and my breath increasingly shallow as I find myself undecided whether I want to punch someone or burst into tears.

I look at his message with disdain. Unable to register what he says other than he won't come.

I watch myself weighing my options:

I feel my rage and desire to call the whole thing off to save whatever is left of my dignity. I want to respond feverishly and spew my anger.

But also, I want to close off my heart and act cool. Let him come when he may. I will remain distant and passive-aggressive. I won't give him the satisfaction of knowing he can hurt me.

I hate these options.

I followed them for decades, and they lead NOWHERE.

I know there has to be another way.

A way that would liberate me from the loop I am in.

I long for intimacy and love and am losing hope of ever experiencing it.

I decide to go up to my room.

I can't even hear my thoughts with how loud it is here.

THE PORTAL

I take a puff from the joint I rolled earlier.

I start praying.

I demand to be shown how to pierce through the illusion of this experience.

And boom!

I receive a flashback to the early 90s.

I am in my childhood home in Antakya with my sister and mum.

I feel irritated at my sister, sitting by the window, excitedly waiting for my father to pick us up.

I am feeling humiliated that she told all our friends about dad taking us to spend the weekend with him; all the while, I knew he wouldn't.

Like many times before, he would say he would come but won't.

He wouldn't even bother to call to cancel.

The scene is not the only thing that is so vivid in that flashback.

I am viscerally in touch with how I am feeling in my little girl body, too.

I did know about this memory before.

What I didn't have access to until this eureka moment, alone, defeated, and slightly high in a hotel room in Amsterdam is the unimaginable pain in my heart.

The pain of abandonment by my father before I was born, and then again and again and again every time he said he would come but wouldn't show up nor care to call.

So much ancient pain is flooding my system now that the dam before the suppressed emotions is removed with my consent to see through the illusion of my current situation.

I forget about the guy.

I forget where I am.

I forget what time it is.

I allow myself to feel the pain, the grief and the rage.

I let the little girl within scream, "This is fucking unfair!".

She is right.

It is unfair.

Without distracting myself with revenge plans, or

strategies to ensure I come out of the situation with my pride intact,

I allow all the feelings to wash through me.

I allow myself to unravel until the line between agony and ecstasy blurs to such a degree that I can’t tell if I am incredibly liberated and joyous or grieving and in pain.

After what felt like a lifetime, but really in less than an hour, I start to feel the wave of intense emotions subside.

I check my phone and see a message from the guy:

"I'm here. Need you to come get me."

He changed his mind (and plans) and is downstairs.

I check in with myself to see how I feel about that.

I am perplexed to find that all I feel is deep gratitude for the role he played in my healing.

I can see how his embodying a similar energy as my father made it possible for me to access the pain so old and so deeply suppressed that I didn't even notice it was still running my life.

Inviting me, getting me excited, then delaying and telling me he won't come at all was the portal I needed to walk through to access that locked chamber of my heart. To release the massive life energy blocked in undigested pain...

Now, I feel grounded, clear, and in my power.

I message him back:

"102. First floor."

I know my relationship with men will never be the same again.

I will not need to learn this lesson ever again.

I hear the knock on the door and I let him in.

With puffy eyes and a trembling voice, I say:

"Thank you for helping me heal one of my deepest wounds. When you invited me and changed accommodation plans first, didn't come at all yesterday, and then kept delaying today, I felt so taken for granted. I felt unloved, and rejected. I was furious at you first. But then I understood why this was happening to me and what this experience was helping me alchemize."

I tell him all about my father and how painful it was.

He listens and meets my openness and vulnerability by revealing what made him fearful of coming and delaying.

This is the second layer of corrective experience I receive.

With my father, I never heard an apology or ownership of his role in my wounding.

When the guy takes responsibility for his behaviour, and lets me in on what’s been going on for him, I can see that his behaviour is about him, not me.

By following the path less taken, risking vulnerability and feeling uncomfortable emotions, I am able to disentangle an ancient story blocked in my system.

ABOUT 6 MONTHS LATER…

After one last portal of initiation, which I had to walk through later that year, I met my now beloved of 5+ years on top of a tree house in a mystery school in New Zealand. In fact, earlier that day in the hotel room in Amsterdam was where I recorded my video introduction to the group I was to meet in New Zealand.

The intimacy and love I always longed for and was told to lower my expectations about is now my daily reality. I can't imagine a life without this level of connection.

Yes, it is scary to take the emotional risk to face our deepest wounds.

But it is the only way to fulfill what you sincerely long for and are starting to lose hope of ever experiencing.