Unanswered Questions

Sitting on an 8-hour flight to Dubai gives me a lot of time to reflect on what was and build that feeling of trepidation about what awaits me on the other side of this journey. Yes, I wonder what physical changes have been made to one of the fastest-growing cities in the world, but more importantly, there are the feelings and emotions I may have left behind. Am I going to be walking straight back into those, or will all the work that I have done on myself these past 3 years hold me in good stead? Anxiety is a future-based emotion, and I am an expert at surfing the future, something to this day that I struggle to rein in and keep myself in the day. Will I get through passport control? Are there hidden debts that I haven’t cleared up? What if the people I once knew don’t like me? How can I make them like me? Will I decide to stay there? This washing machine head of mine is on its final spin.

I had spent 25 years living in Dubai, making a life for myself and repeatedly setting about taking it apart, an endless cycle of building and destroying. My father is from Dubai, but I never felt like I belonged, a sense of wanting to be elsewhere but not knowing where led me to change who I was. Being what you call a third culture kid, as my mother was English, I didn’t know what my culture was and tried for a long time to fit in with the different societies of Dubai, but nowhere did I feel comfortable and like my true self. I felt uncomfortable in my skin and the only way I could stop that feeling was to morph into what I thought other people wanted me to be. Unfortunately, this is no way to live, neither sustainable nor truthful to oneself.

What I thought people wanted me to be was a party animal, someone that could make people laugh and look on as my stories got wilder and wilder. There is no point beating around the bush, alcohol and drugs provided me with a new feeling, a feeling of confidence and inflated self-importance. It allowed me to transcend the insecurities of my place there and stand above everyone, radiating false self-confidence. As the years wore on, and the consequences grew greater, I did not realise until it was too late that I had been sucked into addiction where at last my black dog came home. There were mornings where, without the comfort of a bottle, I was unable to get out of bed and face the world, crippled by anxiety and depression. I lost my job, my house, my relationships, and my kids, and yet still I carried on through a drunken, drug-addled haze. I lost my dignity, I lost my health, I lost my pride, and finally, I lost myself. The will to go on had gone, I just wanted to end it but I was too much of a coward and so I was stuck in limbo, afraid to die but too afraid to live.

Now I don’t really believe in miracles and yet here I am today writing this, somehow something happened to my mindset. I didn’t want to give up and I didn’t want my children to not have a father. I started working on myself physically through running, I started to get the help I needed mentally from professionals and the final piece in the jigsaw was spiritual, to replace the emptiness within me with something greater. From the depths of hell, I managed to climb out and I discovered a set of values and principles to live by and wanted so hard to change within myself to be happy. It took time, and a lot of work but eventually I got there and began to come out the other side. Things began to change in how I thought and behaved, those fears and anxieties that for years I had struggled with began to recede, and a clear path towards how I could be true to myself began to be built. One point that became apparent was that I did not enjoy life in Dubai, a city where I had grown up and become one of the usual suspects riding out a life of endless work, parties and broken relationships. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t all disastrous, and some wonderful flowers of friendship had bloomed during my time there, but ultimately I wasn’t fulfilled. Why had I persisted in remaining in Dubai all those years? With a brand new set of eyes through which to see my actions, I knew that it was fear that kept me rooted in infertile soil, fear of the unknown, fear of the new, fear of failure, fear of unhappiness, loneliness and insecurity (that washing machine head of mine was constantly on a spin cycle of fear). I had stagnated, the shallow roots had come up short and on a personal and emotional level, I had been found wanting. It was time to leave.

And now it was time to return and face those fears and emotions.

As the plane descends on final approach, the lights which never dim illuminate the horizon, the Burj Khalifa looms out of the ground like the Tower of Babel, and soon the plane wheels touch down, and I am back. As with any end of journey by plane, it is a race to get out of the airport as fast as possible, to light that first cigarette and then onwards to wherever you are staying. Standing in the immigration queue, my head starts to go about spending time in jail due to some hidden debt that I had forgotten about, I am travelling on a different passport but still those concerns rise up and I have to practice everything I have learned to stop me from turning tail and heading towards the transit lounge to board a different flight, anywhere but here, Fuck Everything and Run. Face Everything And Rise is apparently what we have to do, easier said than done sometimes. As is so often the case with any of my fears, I get through passport control without so much as a raised eyebrow from the immigration officer - False Evidence Appearing Real - grab my bags from the carousel, coast through customs and bang, the heat and humidity that hits me as I leave the airport slams into me like a freight train. Oh yes, how I missed this! In winter, Dubai has a climate to rival anywhere else in the world but during September, it’s like walking into a sauna. The UK, where I live now, has seasons, all 4 of them, Dubai seems to only have 2 - hot and less hot.

I had several options for where to stay when I decided I was coming back, each with its own merits and pitfalls. First was my mother, emotionally absent for many years and trapped in a life not entirely, but of her own making. I hadn’t seen her since I had left, but knowing her, it would be like time travelling back, as nothing would have changed. The same one-way conversation, the same routine and the same unspoken awkwardness would be there. However, it would be good to reconnect and see how I would fare with a new perspective and sense of empathy. Then there was Eric, a living embodiment and mirror to me of how I used to be. The uncomfortable truth of my shortcomings would be shining out of him, glaring at me and bringing the past back to the forecourt. Furthermore, how would the balance of that relationship be? Was it always unbalanced and unhealthy? Now that my ego had been well and truly crushed, would it be too much to be in the company of someone that ego and self-will were huge proponents of their character? And finally, Lori and David, a couple who I loved, and were always nothing but kind and understanding and yet, in my past I judged harshly. An assumption that I always thought I was better than them, was based on an untrue fact that I was dynamic and successful. They had their lives and their lives remained the same, there was no growth, there was a routine that they adhered to, their bubble protection from the outside forces of Dubai, and they were happy with their simplicity. Did I envy this? How simple their lives were and what they did. I know now that we only ever see the surface of someone, and we never take into account the trials and tribulations of people when we judge them, we never feel what they do and experience the emotions that they have. We base our criticisms of what people do on our personal and world view, how close-minded of me.

I had decided a few days before that I would stay with Lori and David, in my imagination the easier out of the three, and as the taxi pulled up to their house, I felt a sense of calm come over me. Their garden had always been a place of tranquillity, and I guess that is how they survived this place. David greeted me at the door, a smile spreading across his face, he always wore his emotions upfront when it came to our relationship. He hadn’t changed one bit, his youthful face nor his over-exaggerated mannerisms and nor had Lori for that matter. She looked slightly older, age beginning to show, however the lilt of her voice and how she accommodated hadn’t. These were two people, comfortable within, and comfortable with, who greeted me, and an ease settled over as we caught up over coffee. They had seen me at my worse and had not judged, true friends. It’s very hard in this world to find people like that, and for that, I felt, at that moment, blessed. Over the next few days, we caught up, went sailing, and had BBQs and I realised that the truth of the matter was that I didn’t care to judge them anymore for how they lived their life. They were as happy as they wanted to be, and it was not for me to think how they could be happier. I knew that I would be in their lives for as long as time allowed us, and for that, I had gratitude and a sense of peace. They may not have changed, I had, but the change I had made allowed me to slot in easier with them and be a better friend.

I had arranged to meet Eric midweek at a local restaurant, knowing that this would suit him and his false sense of being a food critic. I felt out of balance due to this decision but it couldn’t be changed now, creating boundaries and catering to other people's needs to make them feel comfortable, and ignoring my feelings and needs had always been my kryptonite, but it was too late now to change so to battle with Erics’ ego I charged. As a meal goes it was neither here nor there, Dubai has always excelled at charging a premium for sub-premium food, sold on the back of a pretence of ambience and false civility. What became apparent to me throughout the meal though was how far we had grown apart. I had changed, but so had he, I recognised the worse of me in him, and didn’t like it. I never felt like I was on the back foot in the conversation, but had to be on my guard to not fall into old patterns of one-upmanship. I am pretty sure that he felt that way about me, like David, Eric always wore his disdain for lesser beings on his face. The evening came to a close and we said our goodbyes and our intentions to stay in touch, but the truth is that neither of us would probably do so and that was fine. Knowing what and who we like, and having the courage to move on from things is what defines us, the ability to choose what is good for us and what doesn’t allow us to live the lives that we want to live. I know this now, this wasn’t always the case.

The emotional hangover from meeting Eric meant that I needed a few days to recoup and take care of myself. I had never done this in the past, roiling from one incident to the next, like a ship in a storm, and never for once pulling into a safe harbour to regroup and restock my much-diminished supplies of patience and tolerance. I decided to take the time to have a look around the city where I had spent so much of my life. So much had changed and yet for me, nothing had changed, there were new buildings and new roads, new restaurants and new shops, new people and new sights and yet it all felt the same. The goal to extract money from concrete as quickly and as much as possible by employer and employee underscored everything that happened here and I felt glad my life path had led me out of this modern-day Sodom and Gomorra.

It was time to face the most uncomfortable meeting of my trip, my mother. When people remain the same, stuck in a time vortex, we feel frustration, we believe we know best, and we believe that if they did what we told them to do, then their lives would be better. This is my false belief, this is me thinking I know best and yet I don’t know what is best so I better just keep my thinking to myself and this is how it would have to be with my mother. I love my mother, don’t get me wrong, but our relationship can be like two beginner ice-skaters dancing, neither able to control or decide where to go, so we end up circling around each other completely unable to go anywhere meaningful. During our day together, my intolerance for her limited knowledge and views of the world had to be kept in check, my impatience with her and how she acted kept me on my guard the whole time, making for an emotionally stifling day. Not through a lack of love do relationships with people grow, they require effort on both sides and every relationship that we have in our life requires constant work, exhausting! However, she is my mother, and her sacrifices meant that I was here and alive and that is a bond that is never broken, no matter how bad the situation. I accepted that she would probably never change and never do what she wanted to do, imprisoned by the bars in her mind, and yet that was who she was, and that is who I accept as my mother with the unconditional love of a son.

My time in Dubai had come to an end. Had my fears and emotions been justified? Had the worse scenarios in my mind come to pass? No, it had been a healing process for me, a shift in how I perceived the people, rather than the place. I realised that it wasn’t a city or a place that formed a person, but rather the people that we come into contact with. I placed far too much emphasis on where I lived rather than whom I lived with, and this was what had let me down in the past. Places come and go, and some have more of a way of seeping into us than others for better or for worse. The energy of a man-made place, as opposed to a natural place, has a different energy, go for a walk in your nearest wood, on your nearest beach and breathe in, and you will get an inkling of what I am talking about. However walking through these places with a truly loved one is what makes the occasion, the memory, and that is what makes us who we are.

As the plane took off from Dubai, I waved goodbye, and knew in my heart that I would never have to come back and ask those questions of myself again, would never doubt myself. The feelings and emotions that I had felt prior had been left there, the questions answered and I had grown and changed just a little bit. A healing process had happened, and I was comfortable within myself. It wasn’t that I was closing the door on Dubai, it was that I was closing the door on a part of myself that no longer served me anymore. The place does not make the person, the person is what makes the place for that person, and Dubai was no longer for me.

The End.