Em

[konyeshna]

Cheshire

[konyeshna]

Trade violets for roses

I'm longing to stay home for a few months, but I'm off to Ecuador in 10 days. I get to go on an expedition with qualified people and just hunt for undescribed plants for two weeks. Life has been plants for a few years now. The life that found me.

Last Friday I was staring at a guidebook for Somaliland and wondered what had happened to me. I went to Sudan a couple of years back, and gave up before I ever made it to Somaliland. I told myself it was okay. But none of it was ever okay.

Somewhere along the way I stopped documenting my travels, it had become too much of a thing. A bit of a caricature. Funnily enough, I feel like I've lost things. Plans that I never carried out, trips that got postponed. And who am I without them? Like friends that are there but somehow feel out of reach.

I spent my Sunday in the Cotswolds, because. Waking up in your life, sleeping in your bed, the simple life you chose. I fell out of love with you. So much time has passed, and I'm quite happy.

My new upstairs neighbour is German and asked me about my living situation. I said I live alone, and then I corrected it to, well, I live with my two cats. And he said, that's a family too.

[konyeshna]

NAO - Bad Blood

[konyeshna]

(Photo credit: Barfisco)

Tribute to a father.

I envision myself standing on the beach in Bargaal, Puntland. Trying to find Socotra on the horizon. Thinking how easy it would be to get on a fishing boat. But I do nothing, instead, I just gaze. Tears are rolling down my face, and I sentimentally blow a kiss in the island’s direction. I’m scared the magic of my memories will be lost forever if I return. But I think of Nagib and I smile, for he is at the foundation of my travelling soul, his goodness forever embedded in my heart. Can he feel my thoughts?

It would have taken me months to get to this place. Travelling overland from Morocco. I will have made friends and laughed, I will have been scared. I will hate myself for choosing the difficult path, and love everyone who helped me get through it. I know this by heart now. 

Past travels lose their sense of reality and become adventurous dreams, memories that don’t feel like my own anymore. Future travels feel like tangible dreams, shards from another life. So what is the difference? Which has more value? My current state feels like limbo between these two.

The ones where I can clearly see faces, and remember the impact those faces have had on my life. Surely, they are the precious ones.

[konyeshna]

Getting lost is wonderful, and coming back is wonderful.

[konyeshna]

Life has been very chaotic lately, I’d be lying If I said being in a relationship wasn’t a daily struggle for me. But I’ve somehow decided that this person is worth it. I haven’t had the most organised life the past few years, and now I find myself having to make big changes in order for this to have a fair chance. Which is more than scary. But scary in a good way? My Russian friends asked if I could fly over to Georgia for the weekend. It stings a little that a few months ago, I would've done anything to make that work, whereas now, I have to logically decide that I can't afford to spend that much for just one weekend. It doesn't look like there's a lot of travelling in my near future, and it bums me out completely. That part, I don't know how to fix yet.

[konyeshna]

“Am I cutting your wings?” - “You are my wings.”

[konyeshna]

[konyeshna]

Gram is killing it

[lora-mathis]

radical softness as a weapon, Lora Mathis (2015) radical softness is the idea that sharing your emotions is a political move & a tactic against a society which prioritizes a lack of emotions. strength does not have to mean turning off how you feel and being guarded. it can be sharing yourself openly. it can be putting energy into healing. it can be documenting your vulnerability in-order to make others feel less alone. it can be refusing to be sorry for how you feel. radical softness combats the toxic masculinity which permeates our culture and embraces softness and emotionality-however they may look. 

all of these photos are available as prints here. please consider buying one. my computer just broke beyond repair & i do not have the money to buy a new one.

[purplebuddhaproject]

[konyeshna]

Talking about the future with a guy who is pretty much putting off a break-up so his parents don’t feel any discomfort and hearing about what’s going on exactly was too much. Much too real. I’m done being a part of this giant constructed lie. I’m better than this. Putting up with 7 more weeks of this shit is just going to make things worse. So I hope that in the long run, this will be better for both of us. The less I force myself through this bullshit, the less I’ll blame him in the future. Welcome back principles. No more Iranian guy for a while. We’ll see what happens I guess.

[konyeshna]

Happy summer vibessss. Fireballing and nipple biting, oh my.

Things have been escalating quickly with my Iranian guy. Feelings of guilt are real. We’ve been building up too much sexual tension so of course shit was going to happen when we’re sleeping in a tent together. But it’s the weekend now and he’s probably hanging out with the girlfriend (oh oh, a little progress on that front, he said he’d break up with her in 3-4 weeks instead of 7) and I’m at my parents’ house, going to work in the field with my dad cause I need to get my mind off things. But really, what is my life right now and how am I kind of okay with being the other girl? How do I still like this guy after all this shit? -_-

[konyeshna]

Assekrem, Algeria So I haven't updated in a while, because things have been so complicated it's hard to put it all into words. I'm kind of tired of being a side chick, even though I kind of know I'm the main chick, he's still in a relationship with someone else on facebook. Damn you social media. I ran back home early from Algeria, because no one can take that prison for longer than 2 weeks, I challenge you. It's gorgeous and people are great. A little TOO great. I just lost my travelling mindset and got tired of answering the same questions over and over in different police stations. I got SO tired of hearing 'non, c'est impossible'. And I missed my freedom, my city, my friends, summer parties, cold beers, vegan food and my Iranian guy. So I'm happy to be back, only I'd kind of forgotten how fucked up the situation is with this guy. I won't write it out here, but because of logistical reasons, he can't break up with his girlfriend until the end of August. Two months of torture for me. We'll see if I make it, I guess. For now, I'm focusing on friends, finding a job and handpoking! Tattoos are too much fun, eh?

[konyeshna]

[konyeshna]

Last Sunday, the sun was finally out and I took my books outside to study by the lake because it was just too nice. Even though we hung out for hours on Saturday, Iranian guy came and played background guitar music for me for half an hour until it started pouring rain and thundering. We took shelter underneath a big willow tree with some hippies, hung out with them until they left and then just sat talking. Which was totally fine and cool until the subject turned towards us & the situation. He said something I interpreted wrong and then we started talking about how difficult this was. I told him I was coping by logically thinking that he probably wasn't that into me after all if he still hadn't made up his mind and that it was fine and that I could still be friends with him. That completely shocked him but also made him tell me what's going on more clearly. Sooo now I'm pretty certain he more than likes me, he's crazy about me actually (insert mandatory giggle), he wants to break up with his girlfriend (but isn't brave enough at the moment, it's complicated), wants me to come to Tehran with him in September and told me he would let his heart make the right decision soon. Major swooning on my part, sigh. And relief that I'm not imagining this connection we have. Though he is currently still in a 3,5 year relationship and living together with this girl and I don't know when he'll finally end things. He also concluded the conversation with a very macho speech, "No matter where you are or who you're with, I'll come find you when the time is right and nothing will keep me from you". I've reached some kind of milestone here, having a guy say that to my face with so much emotion. But so, we're growing even closer now and things are getting harder and I'm scared he's postponing this until September. I clearly told him I wouldn't go with him if he still had a girlfriend in Belgium though, and he agreed. But doing that would mean living together in Tehran, and that's major so I really hope things will be sorted by the time I get back from Algeria so we can actually be together in Belgium first. I'll be gone for 3 weeks while he's still taking exams and presenting his thesis, and last night I told him I'd most likely be offline for 3 weeks and he hinted that I should cancel the trip. Which I'm so not doing, lol. In the middle of things finally moving in the right direction with Iranian guy, the guy I was in love with/thought I was in love with, who I finally met in Romania last December after more than a year of intense emailing and failed meetups, is coming to visit me in the next few days. That's a whole other story, but even though I will always love and want this person in my life, we would be a horrible match probably. I left things very awkwardly back in January and I've moved past that, but now he's coming and wrote that he had a lot of questions for me. All this while I have to prepare for a really difficult exam and get my shit together for Algeria. I don't even have a map yet. It's nerve-wrecking. But I'm currently feeling happy and loved.

[konyeshna]

I think I've moved on into a fase of 'I don't need this torture anymore and I should just enjoy whatever time I have left with this amazing person' instead of 'why can't he realise how much better this could be if he would give it a chance instead of being so fucking passive'. Emotionally anyway, my head still spins whenever I see him. But honestly, I'm sick of feeling so worthless and even though he's not actually rejecting me, it still feels a lot like rejection. I'm not the patient, waiting around kind of person and the last two weeks have been like a horrible impasse. Also, I just realised I'll be in Algeria for 3 weeks during Ramadan, sooo that will be interesting... And the pigeon with the neck injury I rescued off the street a month ago, apparently died that same day in the rescue center. Or they killed it off, they don't really say in the email. Anyway, I don't know why it took them 1 month to let me know it died the same day. All this time, I've been thinking and worrying about a dead pigeon. Also, I spent 10 minutes looking for a pen that was in my hair yesterday and messed up my mixer while making soup and got some tiny burns on one of my new tattoos. I guess it's just one of those weeks. -_-