With the break of the first dawn of 2024, and my kid’s faraway sounds trickling into my conscious mind, I woke up a different man.
The end-of-the-year craziness has passed once more and the older I get the more clear it becomes: it’s not for me. Not in the way it’s been going. Each year I walk away feeling physically full, but spiritually empty.
This year, however, at the close of 2023, a light bulb went off and I will be taking home the realisation of something. Something I don’t fully understand yet, but something that will potentially turn the second half of my life into a rollercoaster of discoveries, understanding and confirmations.
Now that my son is four years old and my daughter nearly two, it is clear to me that life gives you what you need, if you seek change. Sofia was needed to ‘see’ Maximilian and the dude was needed to ‘see’ me.
In search of answers, I listened to Dr. Gabor Maté in the past, after which he went off my attention radar. He’s a speaker and author and specialises in childhood development, trauma and addiction. My sister-in-law referred us to one of his books called ‘Scattered Minds’, after Laura was talking to her about behavioural patterns of both Max and I.
The book brings to life the daily struggles of the ADD/ADHD child and adult, the cause of which is, in the mainstream medical world, not fully understood. Nevertheless, it has caught my attention because it seems to explain so much of my behaviour: self-humiliation, addictive tendencies, impulsiveness, difficulties in verbal expression (especial when emotional), procrastination, eruptions of bad temper, the unexplainable mood changes, conflicts in my marriage and, as Gabor puts it; the Jekyll and Hyde ways of relating to my children.
The list goes on, but strangely there are also many (and seemingly) key traits that are non-existing. Besides that, I don’t think there were any indications in my early years, although my upbringing might have been foundational. Fact is, that the last ten years have been dwindling away with negative energy. The older I get, the more painful it becomes, because I know that important time is being wasted and slipping through my fingers, no matter how hard I squeeze my fists.
Investigated time will tell.
“If you sit in the question long enough, the answer will find you”.
I’ve been hesitant as to whether I should write about this now, in this blog or at all. Partly, because one might think it is a travel story blog, and also we’ve barely started blogging. But it’s more than that. It’s as much an account of our travel as it is of our lives, and this is a hundred percent part of our lives. But also, and perhaps this is where most of the resistance lies, because I feel like a cheat or imposter amongst those with a clear diagnosis of anything. The internal chatter: “How can you conclude yourself? What do you know? What will people think? There are so many traits listed that are not you. You’re making this up. ”
But isn’t this what we always do? Trying to reason everything away, based on information from the world wide web and passed experiences?
I cannot deny the strong emotions in my body. Tears of recognising something ‘being me’ and tears of relief, of explanation, of ‘a way out’.
Either way, I am very grateful for being pointed in this direction now. In itself it’s an enormous breakthrough, but with our decision to go hiking for an indefinite period of time, two big parts that are required for healing are fusing. And all the decision making, based on gut feeling, appears to be falling in place. Stripping back life, going on foot and no direct time boundaries provide the perfect conditions to sit with this. Somehow it feels this was all meant to be.
Walking with our children will slow me down and that’s the point.
