My Journey - Part 2

From Here to Tunis

   You may now be asking, well how in the world did you end up in Tunisia of all places and where the heck is that anyway? If you’re not familiar with Tunisia it is located at the very top of Africa on the Mediterranean between Algeria and Libya. Tunisia leads the Middle East on many key issues like women’s rights and democratization. They held their first free elections November 23, 2014. The Jasmine Revolution which began on January 14, 2011 was the catalyst to the Arabic Spring.

    

   I have been here a year now and in that time my entire world has shifted and I have to say, as Abraham Hicks would put it "Perfect timing" indeed.  I have always been someone who has lived by the motto "Jump and the net will appear", which just means trusting fully that God is always guiding you in any moment and no matter what there will always be “enough” if you go for your dreams. As someone who must see it to believe it I have tested this theory many times and found it to be more then true.

   

   For example, as I told you I was accepted to Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, Ca. What I have not told you is that I did not yet have any money to go there and no loans. My parents had been through some hard times and were unable to help me with getting a loan and of course I was not able to get one on my own. However, after what I had just been through there was nothing I was going to let stand in my way. When it was time for school to start instead of waiting, and since I was able to obtain student housing (not totally sure how that worked but I am guessing my parents made some kind of promise because they would do anything for me and are phenomenal) I jumped in the car and left knowing it would all work out eventually!!  I will never forget my mom dropping me off at my apartment, all she had was 50$.  She pulled it out of her wallet and told me that everything would work out somehow no matter what! I knew it would! My parents are amazing and have inspired me to never give up even when it seems that everything is lost.

   

   It's hard for me to recall every detail now but it was not long before I got a call from my mom that my grandfather who had passed away a while ago and was my personal idol and reason for becoming a photographer had left me an inheritance! It was enough to get me through a couple of what they call sessions at Brooks. Then not long after that we heard that my parents got the loans I so desperately needed to get me through to the end. I was even able to get an additional loan to buy the gear that I needed for my underwater photography class. Granted in the end this all totaled well over 150k and to some this was ridiculous amounts of money for a photography education but for me it was a lifelong dream come true. And money is not the purpose of being, happiness and fulfillment are!

   Ok back to Tunisia. Now this was many years later and things were not so good in my current situation. In those days I spent most of my time on Facebook wasting away the hours of endlessness with pointless conversing, scrolling and searching for something or someone to make me feel that I mattered. 8 years had passed since I graduated and left the incredibly potent energy of Santa Barbara and it showed. It was immediate and drastic the affect that leaving had on me. My progress stopped and my health declined rapidly. Then in 2010 not five years after leaving I was on disability and living month to month with my boys barely able to survive. It all seemed like a dream that had never really happened. Swimming with sharks on Anacapa Island, racing for the Santa Barbara Outrigger Racing Team, parties at my friend’s mansion in Montecito, walking across that stage on graduation day all seemed like distant memories that were slowly fading away.  Sadness, depression, pain and defeat were my daily existence mixed with tiny bursts of inspiration. I'd done some great work over the years but nothing really worth mentioning, definitely worth seeing, but I was never confident in myself worth to go all the way. And so I sat all day everyday talking to strangers about the condition of our world, God, The Universe, things that really mattered but going nowhere fast. Every day I still meditated and kept that tiny flame burning deep within me. Then one day I met someone that changed everything.

   It started off innocent enough then over the course of several months it just blossomed. Despite our obvious language barrier it didn't matter there was something there, a spark that was igniting, and it felt right and for me that is all it takes.

   There is something I should explain. Since I was about 12 years old I have been having extremely intense and vivid dreams about someone. I realized as I got older that he was my soul mate.  I never really got a clear look at his face though. It was just this vibrant warmth within me that could only be explained as pure love. I admit I lost a lot of my friends on my search for this person and confused many people for him along the way. It had created within me so much doubt and despair because of what I had given up and how many had given up on me. In fact by that time almost everyone I knew had given up on me and who could blame them. From their perspective I had done nothing but squander the biggest opportunity of my life. My boys were now both gone and I was alone. I had nothing. Someone even broke into my car and stole both of my dogs ashes right in front of my house. I moved a lot, and I mean a lot almost once a month so I rarely unpacked. My car was still filled to the brim and this person broke into my car, left everything else alone except for the two boxes the held the ashes of the only two things that mattered to me, my boys. I mean I had been robbed in broad daylight before, all of my dive gear was stolen right out of my car in the parking lot of Kohl's in the middle of the day but apparently they didn't use security cameras. 10k dollars worth, ya that was a dream crusher but my dead dogs! At that point you would say I had hit rock bottom. I knew it and the world knew it. Everyone hated me, no one would touch me seeing as I was sharing a room with some guy I met on Craigslist and living in a disgusting apartment in Santa Maria. By the way, why do Mexican people use toilet paper then put it in trash instead of flush it down the toilet. Anyway it could always be worse but not much.  

   So where were we, oh ya, you will have to forgive me I did knock my head pretty bad in that accident so I tend to jump around a bit lol. As I was saying, since I was young I had been having some pretty amazing dreams. The only reason I mention that is because the night before I had planned on Skyping with my new mystery man from another world I had another dream. Only this time I saw his face. He was hovering over me as I stood on an escalator. It was slowly going down and when I reached the bottom he stood before me and we embraced in what can only be described as a kiss that was orgasmic to be completely honest. He was just slightly taller than me, slender with angelic dark brown eyes. His hair was a luxurious silky dark brown the kind you could run your fingers through all day long. He had the kind of plump, supple lips that would make any girl blush. To say he was the tall, dark and handsome man of my dreams was an understatement!

The next day came with a lot of excitement and anticipation! Not because of my dream but because I was just happy to make a new friend and it was the first time in a while that I felt something good. I was not prepared at all for what was about to happen. I opened Skype and came face to face with the same man that was in my dream the night before. It literally was love at first site. But having been through so much hell already my rational brain took over pretty quickly. I almost couldn't handle it and was in shock. We hit it off instantly the language barrier, well, it wasn't. His native language is Arabic and French, I speak neither but for some reason I understood him. We could communicate almost intuitively.

   For the next several months we talked all day every day about everything you could imagine and it didn't take long to start talking about marriage and making the trip out there. All I had was the money I was getting for my disability which would just barely pay for my plane ticket. So I began selling and giving away all of my things. I even sold my precious Nikon camera that was a gift from my parents for Christmas the year before along with my computer and my Epson printer. Within a month I had sold everything, gotten my passport, bought my ticket and was ready to go. The hard part wasn't getting all these things ready, it was trying to tell my friends and family and convincing them was nearly impossible. Most of them had already given up on me years ago or never understood why I did the things I did in the first place. So explaining this seemed pointless but I gave it my best effort although. I knew only time would tell the real story, in other words I said my goodbyes. I did have my lifelong supporters, my parents, who were reluctant given some of the research they had done about Tunisia but that was soon resolved, somewhat I suppose as best it could be either way I was leaving and nothing could stop me. I was like a freight train once I got going and no one would dare get in my way.

   It felt like the old days again. I was filled with passion and driven to discover the unknown. It was everything I lived for, to jump knowing the net would always be there for me. Knowing that God led me here and I was so excited to find out what was on the other side. It couldn't come fast enough. And even though I left for a 40 hour journey with not one penny in my pocket it didn't bother me one bit because I knew that he was waiting there for me on the other side and I had come this far so what was just a few more hours compared to a lifetime of waiting!