Lessons in Letting Go

by Corinne Grant

  The next morning I woke early. I had forgotten to close the curtains and the sun was now sliding across my half-opened eyes. Surprisingly, I wasn’t annoyed. No matter what state I was in, I was still on holidays and the little things that would have annoyed me at home (like waking up at 5.30 a.m. with a hangover) now seemed exciting. I was lying on my side, looking out through a wall full of windows at terraced rice paddies, speckled here and there with coconut trees and tiny figures ambling amongst them. I hadn’t seen any of this last night. It was ridiculously idyllic and I couldn’t help laughing. I was an idiot to have thought I didn’t want to come to Bali. Who wouldn’t want to wake up to this every day? Maybe I should move here permanently. I could leave Thomas and my house full of stuff behind and start again. With a warm breeze coming through the windows and the palm trees swaying against the cloud-covered sky, he already felt too far away to worry about.

  I wandered down a different set of steps from last night, following the sound of a gong, to the first yoga class. I passed fresh offerings of flowers and rice laid at the feet of the stone gods that were placed in niches and on plinths at regular intervals. All the pebbled paths were scrubbed clean and somewhere below a stream gurgled. The retreat was carved into the side of a mountain and designed in such a way that you could only ever see tiny portions of it at a time. Everything smelt of water and earth and frangipani and I could hear the swish of the palm trees like gentle rain. Even the air, with its comforting wet warmth, felt easier to breathe than the air back home.

  The yoga class was conducted on a platform built high above the stream, with palm trees and tropical flowers surrounding it. A rattan roof spread above us and at the front sat our instructor, Adi, leading everyone in meditation. I awkwardly shuffled past twelve other women who were sitting cross-legged with their eyes closed. I grabbed a mat and settled down on the far side of the pavilion. I didn’t close my eyes like the others; instead I looked around at my classmates. Some of the women were my age, a few were older, and there was one lady who looked to be about eighty. She was sitting on a chair instead of the floor. And she was wearing her nightie. A woman on the other side of the pavilion with long black curly hair opened her eyes and met my gaze. She grinned broadly and winked at me. She looked like fun. I took a deep breath and tried to focus on being in the moment.

  The yoga was challenging. I was not as adept as I had expected to be. I couldn’t keep my balance when everyone else could. My Tree Pose was a joke and even basic poses like The Warrior—where all I had to do was stand still in a half-lunge with my arms at shoulder height—proved impossible. What the hell was wrong with me? Even the elderly lady (whom I later discovered was called Vy) was doing a better job than me. Of course, because her hearing-aid was on the blink she couldn’t hear Adi’s instructions, so she was doing a lot of improvising but, still, she was on her feet and I was sprawled on the floor.

  The more I fell over, the more annoyed I became with myself. I disregarded Adi’s mantra of ‘Do no violence, especially to yourself ’ and focused instead on hating my stupid hamstrings for being so unresponsive. How was I supposed to find my ‘truth’ if I spent most of my time flailing around and knocking over other people? I had already poked one woman in the eye with my right hand and used the rear end of another as a sort of bounce-board to keep myself upright. I had envisaged meeting people politely over breakfast, not by head-butting them in the arse.

  That afternoon we went for a walk past the rice paddies and up into the mountains. I stayed at the back of the group where I would do the least damage. The woman who had winked at me turned out to be a Texan called Lucy. She was striding purposefully at the front of the pack and she was fabulous. She wore an enormous sunhat and her deep brown eyes were permanently crinkled with either joy or mischievousness. She was chatting away, making friends and asking questions.

  ‘Adi, what do you call that?’ Lucy was pointing at a plant.

  ‘Bunga merah,’ Adi replied.

  ‘And this one?’

  ‘It’s called bungan soka. The women use it in their offerings.’ Adi was swishing through the grass, squinting up at the sun and shooing away the stray dogs that crept towards us.

  ‘What about that, what would you call that?’ Lucy was pointing at a butterfly.

  ‘Brian.’ Adi started giggling helplessly.

  That night there was to be more yoga (which would give me a few more opportunities to fall over), and after that, we were to go to a Balinese temple to take part in a cleansing ritual. It sounded like just the kind of thing I needed—until Adi mentioned we would have to walk into a pool of freezing water fully clothed. I didn’t want to get wet. With all the associated palaver of taking extra clothes and getting changed in the back of a minibus, the spiritual aspect of the trip lost its allure. I was feeling too fragile for all of that. I was relieved when he said that menstruating women were not allowed to take part. Technically I wasn’t menstruating but I convinced myself that I was close enough that it would be culturally insensitive for me to join in.

  Two other women—one of whom was Lucy—were in the same position as myself. We all decided to go to the temple anyway, as immediately after the cleansing ritual we were to start a thirty-six-hour silence challenge. This would be our last opportunity to speak to each other for a day and a half. ‘See?’ I thought. ‘I can look like I’m a joiner without having to actually do anything.’ I felt like I was back at high school, getting out of Phys. Ed. by rattling a tampon box.

  The drive to the temple took an hour, winding up a mountainside in the darkness. We were in a convoy of three vehicles. In my four-wheel drive there were six of us. The driver and his wife sat up the front and murmured to each other in Balinese. We sat in the back, listening to the comforting sounds of their quiet domesticity, not understanding a word of it. Occasionally we would pass a brightly lit shop with nothing inside but a couple of plastic garden chairs and a TV. We passed a local night market where trailers, vans and stalls were packed in tightly next to each other, their sides thrown open to display all kinds of different foods, none of which I recognised. Roadside shops that sold a mumble-jumble of things and advertised public telephones and internet access sat in the middle of nowhere. Then we were in darkness, apart from the occasional house light. I’ve always liked driving in the dark. Seeing the lights in the distance that signal other people’s homes, I imagine the inhabitants are loved, happy and warm inside. Perhaps it really was like that in Bali. The couple in the front almost made me believe it was possible.

  We pulled into a car park, empty at this time of night, which butted up against an outdoor ceremonial pavilion, with giant pillars stretching from its giant cement floor to its giant cement ceiling. It looked even more enormous in the dark, with stray dogs growling in its depths, only discernible by the shine of their eyes. Ahead of us the temple complex glowed dimly and to our right a larger ridge swept up into blackness. Just beside the gate leading into the sacred area was an oversized sign that read: ‘Attention. It is prohibited to enter if you are during your period.’ And after that was added ‘For the ladies’. Were there really men who thought that sign was for them? Perhaps the Balinese thought us Westerners were a bit on the stupid side. I thought of all the footage I had seen of drunken Australians on Kuta beach and understood their point of view.

  Everyone else went ahead and Lucy, myself and a stunning Dutch woman called Dael stood behind a locked wrought-iron gate and watched as the rest of our group went through the prayers and offerings of the purification ritual. They were sitting on a stone terrace, hundreds of years old, with their hands clasped in the prayer position in front of their foreheads. The spring in front of them was hemmed in by more stone. Ornate carvings ran along its far edge, serving as fountains from which the water poured. Vy was in there with everyone else but had sensibly realised her knees wouldn’t hold up to all the dunking in the pond. I watched her gently amused face as the others squealed when they walked into the pool and the cold water rushed
over their heads.

  Our little gang were not the only people in the temple; local men wandered through the sacred site, smoking and butting out their cigarettes on the ancient stones beneath their feet, and dogs roamed around them, howling and biting each other. Us three and our unholy lady bits sat outside and watched through the bars of the gate.

  As the ritual went on I was distracted by a noise behind me. I turned to see a skinny white dog chasing down an equally skinny ginger dog. Eventually the white one caught his companion and, without even offering to buy her dinner first, launched himself upon her and started doing what dogs do best. I shrugged. As long as they were distracted by their own business they weren’t biting chunks out of me. Still, I couldn’t help thinking that dog-rooting slightly detracted from the spirituality of the place.

  After the ritual in the water was finished, the group walked into another part of the temple and we lost sight of them. Not wanting to tire herself out, Vy came and joined us. She stopped short and looked past me into the dark.

  ‘What’s going on there?’ she asked, confused.

  I turned around. The dogs were stuck together. The white one, rolling his eyes and appearing to grit his teeth, was trying to pull himself free of the lady dog and then, as we watched, he turned himself in a sort of yelping half-rotation until he was facing away from his companion. Their rear ends were now joined together by the most delicate of links. They were like a filthy Scotch Finger biscuit. The bitch had a look on her face as if to say, ‘Well, this is what happens when you don’t ask first. I’ll let you go when you’ve learnt your lesson.’ Somewhere in the distance we could hear chanting.

  I had nothing better to do, so I took a few photos of the dogs. Then, as they tried to hobble off together, I thought I might film a little of it. Then I stopped. I was at a Balinese temple witnessing a ritual so strict that menstruating women were not allowed to participate. It was probably not appropriate to be shooting dog porn.

  ‘What are they doing?’ It was Vy, still peering curiously at the two dogs in the shadows in front of us.

  ‘They’re stuck together.’ It was a stupid answer but I didn’t want to go into detail.

  ‘How?’

  I really didn’t want to explain this. Vy, with her little round face and flowery kaftan, looked like she came from a world filled with gingerbread houses where sex did not exist, let alone between dogs.

  ‘You know, Vy, they’re stuck like two people with piercings get stuck.’ That was Lucy, the helpful Texan. Both she and Dael were laughing.

  ‘Piercings? What are they piercing?’

  I felt like we were taking Vy’s innocence. She was obviously far more genteel than us, and if she had lived this long without knowledge of fetishism and barnyard copulation, then it was probably fair to say she could do without finding out now. But she kept asking questions and, having no other choice, we gave answers (Lucy’s more detailed than mine) until Vy not only had a clear understanding of what was going on in front of us, but of all the various parts of the body that young people pierced and the dangers of heavy petting if both parties had bits of metal poking out of the same general area. Then, with nothing left to say, the four of us silently watched the stuck dogs limp around the concrete together as we waited for the others to finish saying their prayers.

  When it was all over we gathered together once more and made our way back towards the car park. As we walked, Vy suddenly let out a little gasp and said, ‘You know what the worst bit about this is?’

  Oh dear. Poor Vy. She patted me on the arm.

  ‘I don’t know how to call back to Australia on these Balinese telephones.’ She grabbed hold of the door handle of the waiting vehicle and puffed a bit as she pulled herself up. ‘So I can’t tell my husband what you girls told me until I get home.’ She shuffled over to make room for the rest of us. ‘Maybe I should get something pierced while I’m here and surprise him.’ And she grinned like an imp as we closed the car doors and started our silence challenge.

  I stared out the car window all the way back to the retreat, smiling to myself. I hoped I grew up to be like Vy.

  I woke up the next morning feeling edgy. Today wasn’t just about us not talking—we were not even allowed to listen to music or read. Instead, we were to focus on our inner selves and write down anything pertinent. It was going to be a long time on my own, and considering that my thoughts and I were not getting along at the moment, I reckoned it was probably going to feel a lot longer for me than for anyone else. I wished now that I hadn’t welshed on the temple ritual. It might have helped clear out the rubbish in my head. I was so wrapped up in hurt, anger, regret and guilt that I was like a pass-the-parcel no one wanted to be holding when the music stopped.

  On my desk sat a notepad and a watercolour set. I picked up the notepad and started writing. I didn’t think about it, I just let my thoughts come out uncensored. I was hoping to pour my subconscious onto the page to see if I could make sense of it from a distance. I wrote for an hour without stopping and then went back and read it over.

  It started off as anger at Thomas for hurting me. I frowned. I had thought I was feeling guilty but judging by the language on this page, I wasn’t so much filled with contrition as I was a potty-mouthed ball of fury. Then gradually, predictably, my anger turned to self-flagellation. Now I was reading that I deserved to be hurt because I had left him. In fact, I deserved this hurt for all the pain and distress I had caused every person I had ever met in my entire life: the Bastard Man, my dad, my sister, the turtle, the little girl in Waltons, Craig in the caravan, Shane Doltrey, the driver who picked me up at Denpasar airport and had to endure me when I was drunk. Then I circled back to Thomas again and another couple of pages were filled with a list of regrets, steadily becoming more and more ridiculous: I had probably hurt Thomas every time I had nagged him to make me a cup of tea; I had probably caused him undue stress by not doing my share of the washing-up; I had probably breathed in the wrong direction on a summer’s day in 2004, making a butterfly flap its wings in Sydney, causing a tornado in Paraguay. Of course Thomas hated me and wanted me out of his life: I was a mean, horrible, selfish person. After that I had written a lot of apologies to him and promised to find a way to make up for everything. It finished with: ‘When he’s happy, I’ll be happy.’

  I dropped the notepad and stared with disbelief at what was in front of me. Did I really believe that I was responsible for his happiness? Here I was in this tropical paradise to learn how to let go of my own pain and I was wasting my time trying to figure out how I could make him let go of his. And if I stopped beating myself up for a second and really thought about it, I had no idea why Thomas had ended our friendship in the first place; I was only guessing that it was because I’d done something terrible. I chewed my bottom lip worriedly. It said a hell of a lot about me that all of my assumptions started with the belief that I was an awful person.

  I stared out the window at the rice paddies. I was trying to control things over which I had no power. No wonder I was such a mess: I had a list of regrets and miseries in my head and I spent every spare moment cataloguing them, reliving them and finding ways to hurt myself with them. I wasn’t helping the people I believed I had damaged; I was damaging myself. I looked again at what I had written: ‘When he’s happy, I’ll be happy.’ I picked up my pen and scribbled it out. I wasn’t in control of Thomas. The only person I could control was myself.

  I made a decision: because I would probably never know the real reason Thomas had ended things, the only thing I could do was let go. More to the point, the only thing I could do was let him go. Finally, here on a little island in the middle of the Indian Ocean, I got it. This was the ‘life’ that Adam was talking about. Shit happens. It’s how you deal with it that counts.

  There was a pile of small squares of paper left in a corner of the writing desk. These were for a ritual that we were to perform on our final day. We were to write on each piece of paper one negative aspect of our lives
that we wanted to free ourselves from, and on the final day, we were going to burn them. We could use as many of the pieces of paper as we liked. I used all of them, and when I ran out, I chopped up more to the same size and used those as well.

  I wrote ‘guilt’, I wrote ‘regret’, I wrote ‘Le Marchepied’. It was like the earth had spun around and shown me the world that everyone—apart from myself—was living in. My father had forgiven me for Le Marchepied, why was I not forgiving myself? The little girl in Waltons department store had probably never thought of me again—and if by some slim chance she had, then she was even weirder than me. The Bastard Man was dead. I should be honouring his memory with more than guilt. I wrote ‘helplessness’ and ‘self-loathing’ and ‘grief ’. I wrote ‘Thomas’. I wrote until every spare scrap of paper I could find had a word on it. When I was finished there was a pile of twenty pieces of paper in front of me, each with only a single word or phrase written on it, but each representing countless memories and emotions that stretched all the way back to my childhood. I realised my hoarding hadn’t started with the physical objects at all; my head was more crowded than my house, and if I wanted to let go of the stuff, then I had to let go of what was inside me first. I had to forgive myself. Nothing would go until I did.

  I looked at my watch. I still had some time left before dinner, so I decided to use the watercolours to paint pictures over the words; if I was going to rid myself of all these horrible feelings then I might as well send them off in style. I tried to paint little scenes that represented the emotions behind the words but as I have no artistic skills whatsoever, by the time I’d finished all my pieces of paper looked like they’d been attacked by a four-year-old. I folded each one in four so that no one else could see my handiwork, laughing as I did so at the birds and love-hearts and terrible impressions of people that I’d tried to produce. Then I stacked the pile on my desk where it would sit until it was time for them all to be burnt.