So there I was in an overly emotional, exhausted heap, My Gorgeous Man was in Hong Kong keeping up his residency and looking for work… and from opposite sides of the world we were both hanging in the “Where the F*ck are we going to live,” limbo.
The next day, Alix our landlady, invited me over for a late lunch and a good few slugs of wine. She gave me a bit of hope by saying that we should approach the new owner and officially ask if we could rent the casita. So I wrote an email and she forwarded it to the estate agents to be passed on. There was perhaps hope after all… and through her unending positivity, I found myself believing that we were saved and actually moving into her casita. Phew. Alix’s fabulous, unconventional, rebellious and non conformist company had really lifted my spirits.
But back in the cortijo and on my own again later that evening, I found myself crying my heart out. I rallied against the injustices. I resisted accepting what had happened. I allowed the full force of my totally unreasonable jealousy and resentment to surface that the new owner had come out of her divorce and bought her dream home, seemingly, ‘ just like that’… while I had lost EVERYTHING after making that horrendous but very necessary decision to Ieave my marriage, my whole life and my beloved Brazil. My heart’s spiritual home.
I was so angry at the Universe. I felt betrayed.
MGM was back in Hong Kong having a great time catching up with friends albeit while on the look out for work opportunities… and I fell into the pit of martyrdom and self pity.
Following my frikking heart was looking anything but a dream. We were going to be homeless, we were struggling to make ends meet, I’d been feeling increasingly ill for the last couple of months and everyone in the whole wide world was having a better time than me.
My black hole felt very black indeed.
And I couldn’t even be arsed to do the washing up.
And I love washing up.
Weird but true.
But that’s how rotten I felt.
Something had to shift… and I knew I was the one that had to help myself. Nothing changes if you don’t change first.
So I reached out to a local healer who works with tissue salts… and she booked me in for a couple of days time. She had worked miracles with Sir Maxelot’s arthritis and I really felt she was the one that I could open up to and trust.
And as my hero of an MGM had cut his trip short to come home and help with the “Oh My God we’re going to be homeless” situation, he was to arrive back that same morning.
Things were looking up. Only 2 days to wait.
That day eventually dawned. But before I could go and see the healer… and then drive the 90 minutes down the road to pick up MGM from Malaga Airport… there was a humungous f*ck up with MGM’s staff travel ticket and it didn’t look like he would be able to get back to Spain, after all…. even though he had enjoyed a ‘freebie’ business class seat all the way from Hong Kong to Heathrow.
At not even 6am, the furtive flurry of highly stressed messages, expletives, calls, lost patience and desperation began. One of the ‘perks’ of having worked 23 years for an airline… is cheap flights and a bonus ‘freebie’ every year. Except, the reality is that it’s a frikking lottery and it becomes the survival of the fittest for whoever has the highest unload priority to get that all important seat. It wasn’t helped that morning by increasingly fed up ground staff making him feel the lowest of the low for being a staff travel passenger in the first place. When staff travel works, it’s absolutely amazing… but when it doesn’t, it can be sheer hell.
So out came the credit card again and I bought a whole new staff booking and the further hell began for MGM to wait till the last minute to see if there was a spare seat left after check-in closed to the public.
It’s hard to believe that I spent over 13 years using staff travel tickets to commute to my Heathrow flying base while I lived between Brazil and Scotland. I thought nothing of it back then. “Bit like getting on a bus,” I used to say. But during those heady years I was generally top of the priority list… and there was an unspoken allegiance between staff to help each other. Corporate games have changed all of that and staff moral is now in tatters. It’s heartbreaking to witness the downward slide after having lived through the best of the ‘good ole days.’
Anyway, I couldn’t bear to tell MGM that during all the stress of ‘flights, no flights, your ticket isn’t valid from Gatwick and the flight is full anyway.’…. that Alix had phoned and dropped the bombshell that the new owner had categorically said a final “NO” to us renting the casita.
She was so upset for us that she’d actually put the phone down on me.
My stomach had lurched, a wave of awfulness moved through me and then I just went numb.
By 10am MGM messaged me to say that the ‘staff travel angels’ had stepped in and he had no idea how, but he was on the flight to Malaga after all.
Phew. YES!!!
Thank you Angels!!!
You see… miracles do still happen!
At 10.30am I was sitting in front of the healer saying ‘that I’d had enough’ and was holding back the tears as I spilled the beans on all my physical, emotional and mental goings on. She sat there nodding with a little smile on her face… while I tried to say that I think it’s adrenal fatigue because that’s what Google says and I feel sick at the thought of going on social media. But she turned round and said
“IT’S THE MENOPAUSE.”
“You are the perfect age and those are the classic symptoms.”
“You need to change your life.”
Fuck Me. On top of everything else… I’m now old too.
51 years old on paper… but so not ready to accept being 51.
Jeez.
She was however concerned about the state of my nervous system and gave me remedies to take there and then, ‘on the house.’ “Emergency help,” she said. I left there with a rather large collection of remedies and supplements… everything to help alleviate the anxiety, fatigue, depression, headaches, weight gain, brain fog and all the other stuff that I hadn’t told anyone else about.
And then off I drove to Malaga… in a haze… with Google Maps leading the way.
It was a good drive and I felt such relief in feeling the healer’s support and for receiving the help for my rather ragged state of being. I breathed in the stunning mountain scenery, blue sky, warm sun and sheer gratitude for living in Spain…. and for just not being back in the oppressive greyness of Scotland.
AND my knight in shining armour would soon be landing and waiting for me at the airport. WOOHOOOO!
“Find the gratitude,” I kept telling myself.
Gratitude shifts the shitty vibes!
MGM had landed safely and we agreed to meet at Starbucks… even though neither of us felt like having one. He was exhausted and venting off about the staff travel calamity and stress… while I was holding it together wondering when I was going to tell him we definitely didn’t have a home, after telling him that we may well have a home, just the day before.
He offered to drive. I protested, but he won. And we drove out of the airport straight into the heavy Malaga traffic which certainly did neither of our stress levels any good.
I probably shouldn’t have told him about Alix’s phone call while we were stuck nose to tail in a traffic jam with the usual crazy Spanish drivers not using rear view mirrors and just doing whatever the hell they wanted. But it just blurted out. And then he got told that his Hot Hostie girlfriend was turning into a crusty old woman… so that didn’t help his mood much either. It’s no wonder we took a wrong turn and then got caught up in even worse traffic desperately fighting our way around a mega roundabout… just to go all the way back to the last exit, to come all the way back again… and totally losing our sense of direction and simply not trusting what the Google BEEEATCH was telling us to do.
It took us a lot longer to get ‘home’ than we anticipated. A lot longer. And we vowed to remember that we don’t turn off at that turn off… ever, ever again. Ever.
Once ‘home’ MGM passed out and I watched more Vera.
We resigned ourselves to extensive property searches online and set up a great big positive vision board above the fireplace with lots of pictures to reflect our dream home… with a very specific list of what we wanted right now. And of course, the abundance to make it all happen.
Two days after MGM arrived home the new owner turns up to measure out the house, despite already having been given the paper plans. I couldn’t face her… but MGM is the perfect gent and helps her out and is friendly, open and good company…. even though on the inside he’s just as devastated as me. But maybe, just maybe making a good impression might help to change her mind about having us as tenants. He even lent her his measuring tape, opened the unopenable door to the storage space below and laughed his way through it all… while I just hid behind the swimming pool trees with Sir Maxelot… still rampant with jealousy and not trusting myself to meet and greet. I’ve never been able to hide my feelings… something that my dear departed Dad always worried about.
After about half an hour, she happily skipped across the garden, slipped through the bushes and headed to Alix’s casita… where we predicted she would be ripped a new a-hole for turning up unannounced and for having accessed our ‘home’ without prior appointment. Alix is hugely protective of privacy and not afraid to speak her mind. We loved her for that. So we were super surprised to hear the next day, that they had actually cracked open a bottle of wine and put the world to rights. And our Alix, had again put forward the case for keeping us as long term tenants in the casita.
The new owner had said she would sleep on it… because she had friends and family she wanted to stay there. She would let us know her decision the next day.
It was a very, very long 24 hours… and we desperately tried not to get our hopes up… again.
She eventually turned up later in the afternoon and after securing Sir Maxelot inside, we sat around the garden table to hear our fate.
And she offer us tenancy!
OMG! We could hardly believe our ears!
We had a home!
It was that evening when we told Alix the good news that she let slip that the new owner had gushed over the white wine at how impressed she was with My Gorgeous Man… and that ‘He had made smoothie with her!’ Knowing that there wasn’t a nutri-bullet in sight, we came to the conclusion that it was a German saying that had got a bit mixed up in translation. But it was My Gorgeous Man that had saved our asses and secured us a home. He had been able to overcome his own upset and anxiety to try and make a shitty situation better. There’s a lesson in there for all of us.
That’s my MGM. Damn, this man is my hero.
And we had a home again!
For the next 6 months!
And we definitely had a home if we were willing to move into the casita in 3 days time when the sale paperwork was completed.
We were saved in one breath and pushed out of our dream home earlier than expected, in the next.
I guess it was the Universe’s version of ripping off the ‘moving house plaster’ and just making it all happen straight away.
I had to drop all my judgements and personal issues… and move into gratitude.
I hugged her tight… looked her in the eye and thanked her from the bottom of my heart.
It was only then that I began to see our similarities… the non conformist, creative and empath… living life in the moment and just … going for it! The Universe was up to its magical tricks again!
The next couple of days were a bit of a blur… we started tidying up and packing but with no contract or anything officially confirmed we were running on pure good faith.
It was now time to pull our energy back and emotionally leave the house… and pack up my crystals.
Monday 2nd April dawned. It was THE day. The day for the sale to finalise and for Alix to leave for her new life in Palma… and for us to move into the casita.
And that’s what I’ll share in my next instalment… because we simply couldn’t have made up the hysterical dramas of our third Moving Day.
Here’s to living the dream…
Love,
PS. If you come on my Channelling Love Retreat in June or my collaborative Yoga & Meditation Retreat with Anya in September 2018, then you’ll drive right past the Casita and Cortijo! I wonder if we’ll still be living there by then!
And if your body is calling out for yoga & healing meditation in the sun… check out my new September retreat… I’m very excited indeed! Anya is an amazing yoga teacher and we’ll be combining the physical practice of Vinyasa Flow & Yin Yoga with healing meditations to take you further into your heart and truth… as well as the delights of chilling, relaxing and enjoying the bliss of staying in a gorgeously renovated cortijo up in the mountains… and not forgetting the nutritious delicious delights from our personal in-house chef!
9th – 15th September 2018
Only 547 Euros Early Bird price till 1st June!
Click on the image for further information and booking link 🙂
