Edition #137 - My 10-Year Tangier Anniversary Party

It’s been quite a bright emotional week for me… I didn’t see days pass by, fiercely resolute to embrace the “now”, and peacefully too immersed into living whatever each moment would offer me to experience at that precise instant. I simply don’t let any of those shiny elements pass me by, unlike in the past when I elected to let “life” so often pass me by. I’m serene but eager to put myself in danger once again, quiet but affirmatively determined, tranquil but intentionally purposeful… Reflectively ongoing.

In many ways, I’m in phase with who I am and aligned with who I decide to be. That state of heart and mind grants me the incredible privilege to have much more clarity on the evolving flow of my existence, but even more so, it gives me a much wider view on a reality I have the profound desire to keep on defining, to single-pick every pigment with which I’m choosing to color my world and to assume it all… The joyful, the dreadful, and whatever tones I can see emerging in between… The magnificence of the transformative chaos I’m engaged in is the sum of those shades and tints that ultimately testify to the richly alive type of collage I choose my journey to be… To become, metamorphose, and morph over and over again…

It was utterly significant for me to welcome the very people who had such an impact on my life’s reinvention flow. We hugged, we kissed, we talked, we laughed, we reminded ourselves of our unbelievable and crazily anecdotal beginnings, but more importantly, we were celebrating our 10-year benchmark anniversary together.

What’s the most fabulous state of our now collective story is the fact that our relationship has been amazingly fulfilling and alive from its inception, so it wasn’t some sort of “good old days” celebration, but another singular reason to see each other and to keep on cultivating what’s been so organically growing for more than a decade now… The blessing of the ongoing “now” is nurtured in the context of an immensely pivotal hunch decision that could entirely transform the stream of your adventure… That’s the priceless gift that we commune as one…

I know it sounds dramatic, and probably rightfully so, but I wouldn’t be here, nor anywhere, if it weren’t for those people. During the whole evening, I was gratefully looking at everyone with a profound and pure type of enfranchised affection I rarely allow myself to experience, if ever, but with them. And that’s what I’m most thankful about… To be me… Alex. Or should I say the Liz (as my nickname here is Liz Taylor — it’s a long story, but I guess you can figure out some of the “precious” why)? I don’t have to be somebody else, fake, or pretend to be loved or to please…

And that reality, which is probably simple for most or obvious to everyone, liberated me in a way I couldn’t expect, in a manner I wasn’t willing to admit I needed any kind of liberation in the first place. I like being Alex, aka Liz, because it’s who I am, with all the emotional weirdness and affectively messed-up elements it involves. I exist as a whole, which gives me the courage to heal what is deeply wounded and to accept what looks broken without much hope for repairs. Nevertheless, after a lifetime of being patched up, I’m being rebuilt here… One loose screw at a time…!

What I also realized afterwards, musing about those ten years, was the fact that I had to come to an unknown foreign land to see strangers welcome me with so much love while I was surrounded by many so-called friends I shared a collective dream with back home, the same individuals ironically calling me brother as long as I provided their free daily lunch… And if it hurts to see the truth, it’s devastating to acknowledge the reality I created myself alone.

That’s why it took me quite a long time to make peace with that situation — not with those people, because I was the only one responsible for letting something initially so humanly beautiful be ultimately turned into a toxic self-serving environment…

There are still a lot of personal unanswered “whys” when I think about that tumultuous season of my voyage, but I’m peaceful now… Grateful for those years even. I guess that’s what acceptance, forgiveness, and letting go create within one’s bitter heart at some point… At least for me it did.

Maybe that newfound serenity is also the reason why there’s been such an increasing distance taking place between me and old acquaintances, a sort of growing silence casting its wide space over the extensive disparity through which we ended up being the different individuals we ultimately became, as if we were obviously all different by design; it’s our defining choices that connect or disconnect us all in many ways… The outcome remains about how willing we are to bridge ourselves over what would be an otherwise incompatible type of kinship. I don’t believe friendship could ever run its course, but I’ve learned to concede that some relationships aren’t always what we want to see them be and are rarely the measure of what we have to deny ourselves to keep them alive, if they ever were. And it’s ok. Sad, maybe… but “ok” nonetheless.

And on that 10th anniversary evening, that’s what I witnessed… Probably more vividly clear than ever before, especially as the contrasting distinctiveness of my past self relics, flickering like worn neon signs remembering the world I used to maintain myself trapped in a lifetime ago, are now barely shadowing, a far remote and anecdotal footnote into the tiny little cracks of darkness trying to survive through the beaming lights of my new adventure, one that got made possible by the very people I was actually celebrating that night and every day since… All reflecting, in their own unicity, a part of the person I decided to be rather than the persona I was hardly able to emulate when I initially drifted to Tangier…

By the end of the evening, a new friend asked me if I believed the best was yet to come for me… My instinctive answer was, as complexly simple as it could be for me to be “simple”, that I had stopped looking for potential upcoming “best” when I first landed here as I began to live what I truly wanted to by being who I was… So there is no best or worst, nor anything in between… Only the present instant and what I decide to make of it.

Life creates life

Your friend and brother,

Alex

PS: I will share the first details regarding the upcoming Special Fall Tangier Weekend on Wednesday… Don’t miss it!!! Places will be limited! ;)