morning thoughts on a sunday in lockdown

 I am remembering going to live at a yoga school years ago in New Zealand.  I first came to a class in town before I followed the teacher and his apprentice to their home in the forest. I followed them down a long narrow winding driveway to a parking spot. I was openly and earnestly walking into another trauma, and, if I have any talent in this world it is finding new trauma. 

When I entered the house, there was a grey cat who greeted me and I sat on the floor with the cat for a while next to my bags. I didn't go any further into the house because no one spoke to me, no one invited me in or told me where to go to put my bags. They didn't look at me or acknowledge me for a long time. 

Eventually the teacher told me to put my things in the back bedroom. I made my way back to the room that was stuffed wall to wall with beds. All empty. I learned later that I was the only person who stayed for any length of time. Most people left notes and disappeared after a couple days or possibly a week. 

This morning I am thinking more about why I stayed for three months. From that first meeting, I should have seen the red flags. The teacher enjoyed being abusive, living out his own pain through the women around him. His wife had left him many years previously, but not before she had cheated on him in Vietnam where they had gone for some apparent humanitarian effort. 

The apprentice was so much worse off than myself. I do not know her history but she revelled in the mistreatment from him. She slept with him, he slept with other women and attempted to sleep with still more, including myself.  This hurt her deeply, but she persisted, thinking one day he would see that she was the one he loved and stop. He told me that he did not love her like she wanted him to, but she stayed anyway. There were so many crazy things that happened there, and I could probably remember many of them if I tried; the taunting about my country daily, calling me sexy and then yelling at me about how lazy I was, but when I woke up early as instructed, being humiliated for that as well. 

  Like all the other experiences I have had with people hurting me, he was just in pain and bitter and had found that his practice (in this case Iyengar yoga) did not alleviate his hell. In some ways his spiritual practice made everything so much worse.  He had nearly been kicked out of the association due to complaints from women of sexual misconduct (which I could clearly see was true) but the apprentice wrote a letter attesting to his integrity and he was allowed to stay. 

  Going to that school dramatically changed the course of my life. Trevor came through the school and for whatever reason in my crazy pain, I eventually followed him back to Sydney. Which is where I find myself 10 years later. I did not want to come here at all. I have never liked it here, not even for an afternoon. But that is all another story. Today I am curious about my own attraction to trauma. 

The question on my mind in the shower this Sunday morning, is why?

I don't think that I am unlucky. I think I should have seen what many others saw about that yoga teacher. I think I would have left the Peruvian after the first lie or the first infidelity or the first bizarre conspiracy theory. If I were someone else. 

   Often I have known and have seen that the people I am with are fucked up, but I stay. I can't just let go and walk away and save myself. 

   I am well loved now, even if it is in this awful city and this unlucky country at the edge of the world. I can see that. 

Sometimes, like this morning, when I am being held and adored and loved and treated sweetly, I wonder in this moment why I got so lucky as to find such a man. 

   This is luck, I think. 

I deserved all the abuse. That was fucked up but normal. 

Where do these thoughts come from? ...