My heart is free…
I still don’t know how it happened, I’m not sure I ever will.
Neither of us ever said anything. It wasn’t discussed. There just wasn’t time.
Tuesday 20th Of June 2006 I was well on my way to falling head over heals for a girl that is both an amazing person and a right pain in the arse at time’s as well. Bright, itty, intelligent, loving and caring. What she was doing with me and how she wormed her way through my emotional defences that I’ve been maintaining I won’t ever know, I swore it wouldn’t happen at least not for a long time, but break them down she did, tore them down and I wasn’t once afraid…
Starting with the most amazing night on the beach, this young Turkish girl picked me to spend the most glorious day with, the skies were clear, the wind was warm and the view and company amazing. After that unbelievable night the following 3 weeks seem to be a blur, an amazing journey that I tumbled through from one high to the next each one bringing us closer and closer till I felt that I’d known her for 10 months instead of 10 days.
From sneaking into my bedroom to owning the dance floor too sharing each others company for an amazing day simply wandering along a river bank in a landscape that is as alien as the moon, from a stolen night in a Taxim hostel to meeting her friends at the most amazing university campus i’ve ever been to, from playing backgammon to an amazing last night where we danced to Ben Harpers “Throw your arms around me”.
And finally to a question of honour that provided me with more self-satisfaction and confidence in my own character than anything has in quite a long time. Caught between the hardest of places and a rock I was able to wake up the following morning with a girl that I could have quite happily have falling in love with and look myself and her in the eye and know that I am who I am and that my moral integrity was intact and stronger than ever.
(For my friends that would like the details email me)
Muge rocked my world and I suppose finally allowed me to come to the conclusion that the walls that I kept wrapt around me are no longer needed. All that remains from the wreckage of those walls is a warning to be cautious and the fixed belief that it is possible to fall in love in just a few short weeks.
In time even these ruins will become over grown and the memory of what they once contained and why they were there will be covered by foliage and trees as nature slowly reclaims what was taken. Those that know me best know that despite my bravado and self-confidence the emotional isolation I kept my heart in was almost perfect but over the last few months a few cracks must have developed. “wry smile”
I still don’t know how she did it but my emotional barriers weren’t broken down piece by piece, no, instead they were smashed apart with such a force that I literally caught myself on several occasion reeling from the blows as though physically struck.
For the first time is a long time my heart is free…
And so on this my last day in Turkey I have a lot to be thankful for, it is almost ironic that a country that is in a lot of respects alien to my way of life and to my way thinking was finally the place that I can honestly say that I’ve been set free, Emotionally, mentally and physically. My parents have often remarked that I seem more centred more content than I have in a long time and I now know that it is true.
Life has so much to offer, the world is an amazing place and I’ve only begun my journey to see and experience it. My motto that I’ve been living this trip by, if you couldn’t guess, has been “Carpe Diem” or “Seize the day”. Instead it should be “Seize each day” and that has been exactly what I’ve been doing and it is what I intend to keep doing for as long as life has days to give me.
For those of you that don’t travel, get out, go just pack up and go, you only live once do don’t let the opportunity for personal growth (that travelling the world can’t help but give you) pass you by.
Anyway that’s enough mindless drivel from me. I promise the next post really will be from Munich.
As always
Carpe Diem
Ralph Bragg
Private Notes
After meeting Muge’s friends and being told that if I had lied about my age she would have left me (I never corrected her guess that I was 23) . The next few hours practically killed me as I battled between myself to tell her that I was 21 or to simply play along and sleep with the girl knowing that I gotten there through false pretences.
Taking her by the hand pulling her to me kissing her I told her that I was going to let her go and that despite the fact that I really enjoyed her company she should hope on a bus that would take her home. When asked I told her the truth that I was really only 21. After having to pull out my drivers licence to prove it too her (She didn’t believe me) she had a slightly stunned look on her face and I had already apologised and started to walk away when I was practically crash tackled from behind. Standing in the middle of the busiest square in Eastern Europe and possibly the european continent I had the best kiss I have ever been given. Needless to say my confession had practically the opposite reaction. That night that followed is probably one of my most treasured memories. Right then and there I was completely open and vulnerable hating myself and knowing that I deserved to be hated but I still stuck to what I believed was right and true. Right then and then I got a sense of self-affirmation that I haven’t experience since I was elected prefect by a strong majority by the student population of St. Laurence’s College. Cheesy and juvenile some might say however for those that know me best know just what that event meant to me…