It is like a dream. I have wanted to come here my whole life. To just be present, feet touching the earth here. Slowing my life down and just allowing myself to be overtaken by the moment. I have long thought it was this remote place. I learned last night on my drive from the airport to Ubud, not so much. There are people, motor bikes, dogs and fast moving cars everywhere.
I am not sure what I expected...but it was not what I got. The airport in Denpasar looked more American than the one in Sydney or Melbourne. There was a throng of people coming and going and an even greater rush of people waiting to retrieve weary travelers and take them for what awaits for them, next.
I was unprepared for all the bright lights and activity. Totty, my driver, was expert at navigating the busy streets, avoiding potholes and dogs and people on motor bikes that appeared like they were conjured from another realm. They are not there, then there are like twenty of them, everywhere.
Whomever told me not to rent a car, bless you. I would have never made it out of the parking garage. Driving here is absolutely left to someone who is far braver than me.
Totty deposited me at the resort and then I got it. The respite comes within the chaos, not removed from it. We turned down a “street” which was really more of a lane. And I was welcomed into a paradise never before experienced. Everyone bowed and was lovely, kind, informative and gracious. The surrounds were immaculate and beautiful. My awe only increased with each passing minute, finally culminating in arrival at my room which was absolutely the most amazing place I have ever been. I was so amped last night on the beauty and wonder of the accommodations, I had trouble falling asleep even though I was up for almost 24 hours.
I slept soundly and woke to birds singing. The barrier between the outside and the inside barely anything at all. It has been a long time since I was in a jungle...I forgot how it hums with life, that there is always something sounding off, evincing their existence, remote though it may be, there all the same. You cannot always see them, but there are always there.
I sit now in my bed, drinking coffee, tapping out my gratitudes, reviewing how I got to this moment right here. How I woke up in Bali. How I woke up at all. All the wrong turns, all the missteps, all the messes and all the clean ups. All the loving and all the losses. All the failures and all the comebacks. And I am brought to tears. Just humbled by the loving grace that has always existed in my life, welling up deep inside me when I need it, always present and available, me often too stubborn to know it on that level one truly knows such things.
But here I am nonetheless. Each and every moment that came before required, necessary to get me here to this place, now. Where I am waking up to Bali, to my life, to my ever evolving sense of all that turns this crazy world of ours. I am so very grateful. So very blessed. I could have missed it all, but instead, because of a taking a very difficult walk up a few steps 30 years ago, my whole life began anew, with a new purpose and direction. I woke up to my alcoholism and was willing to begin something I didn't like and wasn't ready for at all. Today, I wake up in Bali to a life that has provided me an amazing existence, a career, a marriage, children, a divorce, friends, family, a relationship with God and myself that would have never been possible without hitting that horrific bottom 30 years ago.
30 years ago this day I was on my last bender. A five day St. Patty's Day bender where I never drew a sober breath. Where my solution to the pain of living was killing me faster than life ever could. Filled with self hate and fueled by the misguided idea that numbing was the only answer one could ever have to life's misery and pain.
I am acutely aware of just how much grace this whole journey required, and I am also acutely aware that I did not possess it of my own volition. It is all God, and I am humbled to be here now, alive, sober and awake to this life that I have worked so hard to gain and enjoy. In Bali...who knew?
Namaste...
Again...still, one day at a time.
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