Portable dreams

Downtown Seattle, via Twitter

I am woken up at 4:30am by a sound I cannot identify. 

In the time it takes to realize it is my cell phone – a device that solely receives daytime robot calls for someone called Brrr Urrr whose number I now have – the noise has stopped. 

The area code is oddly familiar but it takes me a full two minutes to understand I should have taken the call. 

As the melatonin hasn't worn off yet, I resolve to roll over and try to go back to sleep for another two hours, noncompliant brain already whirring away. 

I'm still clutching my first vital cup of morning coffee and ploughing through my inbox when the phone rings again at 7:00am. "I've seen your ad", the lady says, and launches into a long friendly tirade. On my screen, an email tells me my ad will only be published after receipt of payment as I live outside the archipelago. 

I gulp down some more coffee, take note of the lady's contact details and go to the website where my ad is already sitting at the top of the page, far longer and wordier than any other. 

That's the ad I haven't even paid for yet! 

My inbox sees an unprecedented surge of activity, too. A local journalist immediately offers help then asks as a casual  afterthought about what brings me to the island (shouldn't it be the other way around?), a lady sends me a shy two-line email that reads "I am friendly too" and, at that very moment, I know everything is going to be fine. 

By refusing to go back to Europe to watch my ideas die in some dead-end editorial job that would make the last three years of my life redundant, I forced myself to dream up an alternative. My partner's enthusiastic reaction gave me the confidence to pitch the idea to a client. 

Who loved it as much as we do. 

This new project builds on my previous work – on another island very far away – and is the pilot phase for something bigger. Because I will work with a country that has been crushed by the economic crisis, the budget is minuscule and we end up bearing most of the costs for now but I am confident funding will happen once the project gains visibility. 

The project is unusual and designed to shed some light on those who have been forgotten or are too often overlooked for economic, cultural, linguistic or geographical reasons. 

Ultimately, it's about bringing people together. 

From now on, it's all about explorers, everyday heroes and all those who dared to look beyond the horizon for a better life. 

This time, it's personal.

Notes on a failed suicide

Duel, via my Instagram.

Would you know a cry for help? 

Yesterday, my partner came home saying someone he knows had attempted suicide the day before and only failed thanks to a Facebook status update that prompted a friend of his to call 911. 

Reaching out saved his life, but only because someone else acknowledged his cry for help. 

Not an easy thing to do in a world that expects you to be strong and self-reliant in every way then looks down on you if you're not. 

Not an easy thing to do in a world that expects you to save your own life.

If asking for help is seldom an easy task in regular situations, reaching out when you feel invisible and worthless requires the kind of courage you don't think you have if you're considering suicide in the first place. 

But if suicide is the final way out, a deliberate and permanent exit from a life that has nothing more to give, doesn't its execution require the kind of courage most people would never have? 

Nevertheless, suicide is rarely portrayed as an informed and thoroughly thought out decision. It's more likely to be viewed as an act of cowardice than bravery and inspire pity rather than empathy. 

Because, deep down, we're usually too wrapped up in our own selves to look out for anyone else, too cynical to even consider the possibility that life might be harmful to some because most of us just get on with it. We refuse point blank to even try and understand suicide - we're terrified that if we do, it might no longer appear completely irrational. 

Worse, we might end up identifying with it, especially if the circumstances surrounding a suicide or a suicide attempt point to a sentient and intellectual choice rather than one influenced by a chemical imbalance in the brain. 

Suicide - be it thinking about it, reflecting at length on it or attempting it - is one of the last societal tabus, so unmentionable that you'd be hard-pressed to broach the topic with anyone even close for fear they might swiftly boot you out of their life, commit you to the nearest psych ward, mock you or simply ignore you. 

The question remains: would you know a cry for help? Or would you dismiss it as a self-indulgent flight of fancy from someone who just needs to buck up and take responsibility for their own life? 

And if someone mustered the last of whatever shred of courage they had left in them and asked you to save their life, would you willingly step in as a superhero or run for the hills? 

That's why reaching out is always a long shot and not everyone harboring suicidal thoughts will even attempt it prior to following through. 

Instead, suicide becomes their legacy.

Because voluntary death is never an extreme attention-seeking stunt, but a silent cry in a deaf world.

Chance

One day, I rearranged my partner's Hawaiian shells...

Life as I know it is about to change. 

My happiness, our happiness, the happiness my partner and I are making is like sand in an hourglass we may only be allowed to flip over again at some stage although neither of us knows exactly when, if at all.

I love my life. I love our little cross-species family of three; I love my heart being a home for them – and their hearts a home for me; I love the companionship that has replaced the searing loneliness; I love my brain being flooded with inspiration and creative energy just because I am happy; I love being found and no longer lost; I love not having to self-edit under any circumstances because I know that I am loved, truly loved, chasms, cracks and chaos included. 

What's not to love about love?

Gratitude is the snuggle blanket from under which I peek anxiously into an impending future made of nothing, where our little family has been atomized and stretched tight across thousands of miles, hoping it won't break, hoping it will eventually ping back together somehow, hoping for the best even in the worst case scenario.

From July 4 onwards, the calendar is a blank page on which there are no birthdays, there is no anniversary, no Christmas – that traumatic time of year we redefined together – or New Year. Nothing to look forward to but limbo, distance, absence and lonesomeness, that faithful companion always waiting in the shadows, ready to pounce. 

The rituals that make up our shared daily life, those little big things that we so treasure will stop abruptly, leaving gaping holes in the fabric of our days. 

Like the candle that I light every night to welcome my partner. 

Like falling asleep every night to the sound of a heart that is not mine, head on chest, shoulder nestled in armpit, fingers entwined. 

And waking up next to each other, delighted at the other's presence, sleepy brains racing to be the first to speak the three-word incantation that sets the tone for the day.

I love you.

And hugging unhurriedly every time we feel like it. Which is a lot. And often. 

Like putting my forehead against the cat's, unleashing a series of appreciative purrs borne out of mutual appreciation. And having him instinctively pop up on my lap when I am perfectly still, lost once again in the kind of sadness that freeze frames time.

And being woken up by the brush of a whisker against my cheek, a tiny surprised sneeze on my arm or four paws navigating the length and breadth of my body looking for increasingly scarce squishy spots.

And being suddenly meowed at for being distracted and not dispensing enough attention / snacks / cuddles.

And cooking a vegan dinner from scratch – out of fresh ingredients – for three even though there are only two of us and putting the third portion into a take out box for my partner's lunch the next day. 

And sharing the same space as him while happily doing entirely different things.

And drinking that first cup of coffee on a Saturday morning, the same cup of coffee I brew every day but this time made by someone who pushes the button on the machine in such a way that the coffee always tastes better.

And being engrossed in offbeat movies and geeky TV shows, clutching a cup of tea, holding hands. 

And the list goes on...

Despite acclimatization and teething glitches at first, embracing normality and leaning into happiness made me realize that I have a knack for both after all. 

And yet, in exactly 20 days I must part with my best friend, my confidante, my muse, my lover and 6 lbs of fuzzy baby replacement joy that makes my heart explode with cute several times a day.

Because in exactly 20 days, I'm leaving.

Much as I would love to believe and trust that my partner and I will continue building togetherness across the miles, I can't help but wonder why this extraordinary love that neither of us ever thought we'd find is somehow being left to chance.

Seven months on

The best bathroom sign in Tacoma, WA, via my Instagram

Let me make this clear once and for all: I didn't come here with an agenda.

When I boarded that plane on Christmas Day, I was in love with a man I hadn't met yet. 

Or rather, I was in love with the idea of a man I hadn't met yet.

A man I hadn't even seen or heard yet. 

A man I didn't know but for the unbridled humanity he had shared with me online. 

And vice versa. 

Christmas Day was about two strangers meeting for the first time. 

That we should be standing in front of the airline counter hand in hand within a few minutes wasn't a given. 

That we should fall in love with each other within four days wasn't a given. It may have been quicker, but four days is the time it took to vocalize it. 

That we should naturally arrange ourselves into a cross-species family unit of three wasn't a given. What if the cat had hated me? 

That we should look at each other and realize we wanted to grow old together wasn't a given. 

That I should return to Seattle wasn't a given. There was no way of knowing how what started out as mutual curiosity and blossomed into a novel way of connecting – by focussing solely on hearts and minds and deliberately excluding appearances and other non-essential details – would translate into the real world, even though we both agree that our digital life is an intrinsic part of who we are rather than a separate entity. 

I could have been a man. 

He could have been a cad. 

We could have been an anecdote rather than a story.

Love as compost

Compost, via the awesome Gateway Greening

This love wouldn't have been possible but for all the crap that came before. And this love wouldn't have been possible but for the unusual measures taken to prove its existence, the wisdom to know it when it came along, the guts to embrace it, and the faith to trust it regardless of the distress it is causing.

Love is my compost, my fuel, made from the decaying mulch of fears, doubts, shortcomings and rejection. It nurtures, inspires and empowers the present. It will power the future. 

It is also my our context. 

Because every personal narrative needs a context, otherwise it is just meanderings adrift at large, a voice that blends into the ambient background noise. 

For years, lonesomeness was my context, I was mostly invisible to hearts other than my own. My heart got squandered on the blind and eventually, I willed myself to mute its bleatings. For safety's sake, for convenience's sake, for comfort's sake, for irony's sake.

Because love and I seemed to be mutually exclusive.

I was born with paper-thin skin, an all-consuming desire to be loved but no blueprint. My arrival into the world torpedoed my mother's sanity and my parents' marriage with it. I learnt to exist as lightly as I could, apologetically, surplus to  requirements in a world as alien to me as I was to it. 

The shame of the unwanted became my home. Because I wasn't good enough for my genitor, I tried to make at least sure I was good enough for me. I ate books and lived for the language that would give me so much more than words. 

This voice. 

Where I come from, affection had to be earned and love had to be deserved. No matter how hard I tried, I always fell short. I had my first hug at 17. It took me a long time to feel comfortable with holding and being held but the fear of rejection never left me. I still never quite know when to let go because I always wish I didn't have to. 

I kept wondering why everything around me always seemed less than it could be, why most people schemed, plotted, calculated and manipulated one another so they could get either more power, more stuff or both. When I finally looked into my heart for answers, I understood that this is where human worth lives, waiting to be found. 

You are not the sum of what you own. You are not the sum of what you owe. 

But we have a habit of keeping our hearts tucked away from view. On occasion, we deny having a heart so it cannot fail us. We even go as far as defending this practice as self-preservation. 

Self-sabotage. 

Self-mutilation disguised as the kindest thing you can do for yourself to avoid feeling. Comfortable numbness, the horizon on the tip of your nose and a robotic pared-down existence. It is functional. It works. It is safe. 

It's called fear. 

Then one day your heart jolts awake and panic ensues. 

I lost most of my younger years to fear. And yet, at 36, I still have a raucous heart. It has a tendency to take everything over but mostly, it embarrasses me now. Initially the compass that led me here, it has become that parasite living in my chest, hemorrhaging love, running out of life and fighting for recognition. 

Before it is plucked out like a weed and forced into exile with nowhere to go. 

And even with all the courage, kindness and common sense in the world, there is nothing I, Hannah, can do.