Its been a pretty rough week in kitty town, I have been sick for 5 days with various diagnosis ranging from "The Rona" (which was ruled out) Dengue Fever to Bali Beli... I was rolling from my bed to the bathroom to the couch & back again it was un-pretty... fever, no appetite and some other symptoms no one really needs to have etched on their reading eyes. I even went to "Dr G's Web MD" (Google) and one quick quiz had me up the duff... I was like ok thats enough of that!!
Today I have just managed my first meal, avo on toast. Please god why would someone put coriander on this just why?? Anyways the food is in and I am typing, so far so good.
In the few days before I got sick I had a pretty challenging friend sitch arise. I received a message from a friend friend here in Bali saying he had been mugged & beaten had his phone & bike stolen had a broken bone & was not looking his most handsome self. This is the last thing that anyone wants to hear from some one you care about. You feel their pain, you ask all the questions & get vague answers & make offers to do what ever you can - Of course you do this is your friend!!! & fellow yogi.
You head over to another friends house where your injured friend has been generously accommodated and is recovering & do all that you can to help. Drive them to hospital, maybe they need further medical treatment, pay a few bills for them, help try & retrace what happened & put the puzzle together. Encourage them to go to the police, tell them to rest. Encourage them to lay off the cigarettes & maybe give their lungs a breather.
Slowly but surely the story starts to come undone. Why was your wallet at a bar? Why don't you want to go to the police? You know in your gut there is more to the story that is not being told or shared. You know that alcohol is involved you read the paramedics report at the hospital. You're thinking to your self this was not a mugging.. You don't say it out loud.
BTW This would not be my friends first drunk driving incident. The injuries don't really look like a mugging? Do they? You feel sick that you are even questioning how someone came to arrive at a place with this much damage to their body. He will not be rolling out a rubber rectangle any time soon.
Instead you do like you have done the 1000 times before when they have turned up crying on your couch to get your support & advice.... In supportive tones you suggest..... that they need to create a routine for their health & well being, get bak on the rubber rectangle you say.. maybe get help - that they can't do it alone, perhaps a support group or counselling, have they considered going back to their home country where they are more likely to get the help support & treatment that they need?. You tell them that you care about them & that you hate seeing them like this, its true you do your heart breaks for their pain. You repeat your self over & over you leave them with a helpful to do list & you take your physically & emotionally exhausted self home.
The next day you see a GoFundMe asking for donations to support this persons life in Bali while he recovers. But he wasn't working anyways how was he funding his partying lifestyle? The day after that you hear the bike has been returned to the rental company - so not stolen. The police that attended the scene have his phone - so also not stolen. GoFundMe is still live. I have heard, read, seen, witnessed & supported enough.
I have helped this person countless times over the duration of our friendship, I m a pretty supportive friend. When I first met him he was vivacious and engaging yoga teacher, he is fun his classes were like little adventures! I was mildly put off by the pre class cigarettes & the overwhelm of spray cologne that wafted around him in the shala, it niggled me a bit. teaching pranayama with cigarette smoke filled lungs kinda seems incongruous to the point of well ....pointless
He stopped teaching yoga last year, what was a little & rare glimpses of sense of entitlement became more prevalent. After a bike accident, where one of my closest friends bailed him out & nursed him back, his story eventually revealed that he had been out drinking & was riding home drunk after a McDonalds pit stop. The fact that you get on a scooter drunk shits me to tears & but he never learned he just keeps doing it. Not caring about your life is one thing but the blatant disregard for everone elses safety is another. Sitting with a broken collar bone & a bloodied face asking what the universe is trying to tell you is a face palm moment.
Without going into ever single detail of the journey of his undoing it was up & down hill from there.... more partying, no life in yoga cause he would often not show up to classes & not keep his jobs, masking sadness with alcohol, going on 2 week benders, and when they ended you would find him crying on shoulders & couches of friends you would hear about the fights with those friends (as they called him on his BS) until eventually those friends drifted away just as I have now. Stories & secrets are told & shared worn like a badge of honour with sense of entitlement but you start to see the unhinged behaviour. There is so much to share here but I just won't. Over the last 8 months this persons behaviour had become more entitled & fraudulent and very possibly criminal.
Bali can be weird in some ways, its not like home..... you can literally "go troppo" here
No one will bat an eyelid if you are drinking Bintangs on the steps of the Circle K at 10 am on a Tuesday, in fact passers by are more likely to tell you to have a great day. If you can't hold your self accountable, no one else will either. If you want to make this work you actually have to work, create a schedule- take action, commit & belong. If you are drifting about eventually things will go pear shaped. Some where in the unhinging he has mistaken abundance for entitlement these two words are most definitely not interchangeable.
I did have the chance to tell this person that I cared about him, that our friendship was meaningful & that I hated seeing him in this mess both physically & mentally. I asked him if this was his rock bottom, if he was willing to get help. He wasn't sure.... I said to him... if this is not it, what does the next version look like??? So, I guess that was my answer & with that answer sadly tucked in my heart, I gave him a hug, told him I loved him & left. I simply couldn't clean up, parent or advise him any more. I left quietly knowing I had done all I can.
At what point do you make the choice to enable this person to continue on this trajectory or just put up the stop hands call time & walk away? For me it was the GoFundMe page. Taking money off people who believed that a person has been mugged & beaten on this beautiful peace loving island is fraud. Not to mention totally uncool to the people that funded him. Its an unfair advertisement of Bali, the place we have chosen to call home. By doing nothing I would be complicit in enabling him to profit from his lies, ever tainting the Balinese with being the cause of his injuries.
My older wiser self has no desire to get drawn into this high level personal, self created drama. I have worked hard like actual work, self work, tears, asana, therapy, medication & meditation to get out of that drama. No human being should live like that with that level of pain - it is simply not necessary. At the very heart of it is a lack of self love. Our desire to belong is fundamental to our existence and the inability to belong becomes debilitating when we can't or don't even belong to ourselves.
I developed my Personal Transformation Program precisely for this reason. Connection to the self, self love getting to the heart of it our unique creativity that enables us to create a life of joy - Our life by design. This person needs my program - but giving him the content aint gonna help, he will never do the work cause he doesn't actually want to change(yet). He needs to find his actual can't take this no more pain point.
So I have walked away. Walking away from a friend ship is hard, its sad too. But you become like the people you surround your self with & that behaviour is not something that I want in my life I want to have interesting, challenging, fun, fulfilling conversations. Friendships & relationship that are mutual rewarding & respectful. If you walk away form that friendship lighter then it was most likely a good choice - Friendship should be difficult.
So yes even though it is hard, there are many questions you might ask - Have I done all I can? How do I feel in this persons company? Am I aligned with their values & behaviours? Have I outgrown this person? Am I parenting this person? When & why is or does this person choose my company? Perhaps patterns will arise that don't sit comfortably for you. Perhaps you will recognise a part of you that enjoys the drama? These questions indirectly ask you to look deeply at what it is you value in your life & if you don't know the answer back down the rabbit hole you may well go.
I am certain that the unravelling of that individual & the wrapping up of that friendship over those few days had a direct impact on my health. I am not laying blame by any stretch but you cannot open your self up to the possibilities of a brightness of life as you are doing the self work with out being vulnerable to the other emotional states as well, you just need to be able to know when to hold it or fold it.
We had so many fun times, actual belly laughs & adventures- but it was always only ever after I had picked him up & helped him process, his latest personal trauma, bender, or drunken night out.
I will miss him & I wish him nothing but love & wellness, especially wellness.
Have you ever had any friendships that you have outgrown or had to walk away from?
I would love to here how you navigated your way through that space.
If you would like to know more about Perfectly Imperfect Yogis Transformation Program simply click on this link I would love to chat with you about the possibility of working one on one together.
my friends may you be happy, healthy, worry free & wealthy
much love kitty❣️
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