#27 ‘The Beggar’
27.
'The Beggar'
Today I met her again. The woman begging in my neighbourhood.
I would most probably not notice her that much back home in our little Balkan country, where homeless people and professional beggars are sadly a very common sight. Children mutilated on purpose to make your heart skip a beat, old women sitting selling the first violets and frost flowers like in fairy tales at freezing temperatures… There is a limit to how many times someone's heart can break. Then comes apathy and a blind spot.
But here in the well organised western city, it is a rare sight. She seems to be a shimmer from a parallel reality. A gipsy woman in her seventies, dressed in layers, pushing a carriage with all her belongings. Sitting and waiting for someone to give her a couple of cents. Something about her intrigues me. It intrigues me a lot. The unfamiliar familiarity of the situation, the unusual combination of a time and place, the social fusion?
It is a beautiful summer day and I am passing her eating my newfound passion, ice cream. I am chasing the melting combination of my favourite flavours as they threaten to drip away. I am truly happy. The sun is shining its rich light of abundance right into my heart. All in my life seems at that moment in balance and well. As I am passing her sitting at the side of the pavement, our eyes lock in that peculiar way it sometimes happens with total strangers. One second in which it feels like you took a bite of someone's soul. Their life flashes in your subconscious mind and you get a quick understanding of each other. My life is so perfect at that moment that my legs are dancing further and I am following the mellow sunny pace of my steps and walking on, away from her, destination home.
But, that bite I just took of her soul starts mixing with the flavours of my ice cream and just doesn't leave my sub-conscious in peace. Before it becomes a conscious decision, my legs are turning me around and I am pacing hastily the whole block back to her. I have an urge to give her all the change I have on me. More importantly, I just need to go back to her and give. My hand is reaching out with a couple of coins as hers is lifting. Placing the coins on her palms, our hands meet and I am touching her shockingly soft hand. She greets me with a Buddhist gesture of gratefulness and is visibly moved by my gesture. When we look at each other closer, I recognise her eyes and the expression her face carries. I walk on from there with a glowing golden aura of satisfaction around me despite fighting the discomfort of touching an unknown person and my compulsive disorder and fear of germs. The golden dust stays on my heart long after I wash my hands vigorously at home with an excessive amount of soap...
The sensation of that touch haunted me for months. When I am walking the streets of my neighbourhood I am looking for her. The next time I found her I run after her to give her some more coins. I am curious to ask her who she is, how she found herself in this particular city, how can I help, but at the same time I am cautious just like with a stray dog, being aware that the moment you give them attention or a piece of old bread, they will start following you home, anticipating the feeling of finding the life bond and trust you were not planning of being burdened with.
Some months of internal questioning and searching passed before I realised what her hand touched in me. I realised that it opened a portal to the familiar feeling of a beggar wandering homeless within me. I look back at myself and see that for long years I gave that same discomforted smile combined with sorrow to the people who reached out to help me in any way when I arrived into my new life in this city back in the ’90s. I was grateful to receive the emotional crumbs people gave me. Crumbs of acceptance. Enduring the soul crunching compromise to survive, with the lid on all the true possibilities and dreams, riding the wave of the unwanted opportunities of the others. Slowly rage started overwhelming me. That rage combined with the feeling of helplessness made me sick for years. Proving to anyone giving me a chance that I would be standing on my fragile legs and walking as soon as I can, just like a baby deer has to run as soon as the danger appears. Walking on weak legs makes you wobbly and your walk seems clumsy and forced. You don't fit in. People are cautious with the needy and the angry ones.
It is only predictable to say that I crashed and broke my legs countless many times. A year has passed since I learned to walk the last time again. I finally have more and more the feeling that I am participating in my own life designed by me. On a good day, I accept the foundations it is built on. Life seems fun and inspiring. Most of it is in my hands now and not in the ones tearing me apart. I dare to say no to the opportunities, not truly mine. And so an assassin in me is born fascinated by the newfound powers over things that made me weak. And I am enjoying the feeling of targeting over and over again the sources of my vulnerabilities and insecurities within me. Wherever a bullet leaves a hole, love shines its light on the path of the life ahead of me. Trying to follow the light and love and care wherever I can.
