I went to a fortune-teller today. She told me the truth about myself, about how lonely I am with my thoughts, but what she exactly said is another story. The story I want to tell you is about what my thoughts are, as unexplainable as the stranger who helped me understand them.
You are beautiful, never change.
As I was walking around the streets of Bangkok and noticed the national sport there is to hook up with someone, I wondered why I can’t. I mean I can, but I don’t allow myself. Someone recently taught me that it doesn’t matter how hard I try to convince myself that sex can be so insignificant, energies get intertwined with each other during intimate moments and my energy, my sense of self is my treasure I hold on to the most. I can not allow that anyone wouldn’t treat my energy as precious as I see it and that they would hurt or even destroy it. It’s a risk I didn’t want to take. The last time I slept with someone was the time I really loved someone. It was extraordinary love if I tell you myself, but that was a long time ago and that’s okay, but before I never thought it would be okay, until a stranger taught me I would never need anyone.
And there he stood. In the streets of Bangkok where it was loud and crowded, but he stood out and looked me right in the eyes. And he smiled, he smiled louder than any noise around me. Draped in scarves of silk as soft as his lips would touch mine. His dreadlocks were a mess, but so was I. He came closer to me and just said one thing:
You are beautiful, please, never change.
And he left. That’s all he said. I looked over my shoulder and stood still and thought to myself “don’t go”. I whispered “why are you leaving?”, but he kept walking and looking at me. Hours had passed and the night had been amazing reconnecting with my travelers, but as soon as I thought about the stranger, I saw him again. I went up to him and it the background I heard my friends say “go to him, right now!” My feet were already moving and as soon as our eyes made a connection he smiled again, but I wish I could explain what a smile like that does to you. “You are beautiful, please, never change,” I said.
I remember the detailed fractions of his reaction. The wrinkles around his eyes when he smiled. The curls his mouth made and the way he spoke with his crystal clear eyes and of course that one hair that was sticking in the wrong direction of his beard. “You are extraordinary,“ I heard with a French accent, but we immediately agreed on not telling anything about ourselves. It was now, this exact moment that was alive. I noticed my friends never saw me like that, because me and the stranger couldn’t take our eyes of each other. “Let them be, let them be, I mean, look at them, look at them, they’re beautiful together,“ I heard in the background again. Hours had passed again and we sat down in dreadful chairs in front of each other, our knees touching each other.
“Listen,” he said, “what are you so afraid for?” I didn’t know if I was afraid of something in particular, but I remember I said 2 things:
loving someone and believing I have to be loved back by him/her
my thoughts creating a reality that will eventually disappoint me
What about you? What are you afraid of? “I love people of the world, but I have loved only one man though in my life, but tonight you’re that person to me,” he said. He smiled and kissed me.
In that moment I didn’t really understand exactly what he meant by that. I convinced myself I would sleep with him that night.
We sat down in a couch in front of my hostel while the other ones went to bed. We were there alone and he noticed I got nervous. He smiled again and said the one thing I needed to hear:
You don’t need anyone, you have to know that, you really really don’t need anyone else but yourself.
Then I realised what he meant. I didn’t have to sleep with him. He didn’t want lust to overcome the purity of looking each other in the eyes in the present, in the now. He struggled with the same thing as I did, but he told me his demons were to not give in to lust. Instead of sitting next to me, he moved in front of me. “I can’t, but I want, but it’s like this eternity of the present would be forgotten,” he said. I looked at him and smiled. “Go,” I said.
He took my chin, stroke my hair behind my ear, looked at me one last time, smiled and said: “François, from Belgium.” Kissed me and left. My heart was beating fast and I went to my room, I just dropped on my empty bed with my arms spread out and thought to myself “I don’t need anyone”.
You, whoever got to this point of reading, you don’t need anyone else.
"Niemand zegt je als je klein bent dat het dit zal worden. Dit leven stil en donker, waar alleen de gekwelde zielen uit ontsnappen. Om het dan nog stiller en donkerder te maken voor, voor al wie blijft."
- Griet op de Beeck, Vele hemels boven de zevende (via chaudeslarmes)
