sleep paralysis and black holes

(I'm still in Guanajuato, spending Christmas here before heading on a road trip to the jungle/subtropical rainforest for the New Year's Eve)

Yesterday I experienced an episode of sleep paralysis. I was peacefully chilling on the hammock on the terrace, fell asleep and at some point found myself awake in my body unable to move, hearing my own breathing and my heart racing in panic. It probably lasted a couple of minutes, but it felt like hours of pure horror. It was all blurry, I was falling in and out of sleep, dreaming that I fully woke up and left the hammock, but then instead of the concrete of the terrace floor, I felt sand beneath my feet and I knew that I was on some unknown beach, still dreaming. When I finally managed to wake up, both my mind and my body, I couldn't believe what had just happened, even though I experienced episodes like this before. It is a feeling of a complete loss of control, helplessness, being tied up and not able to do anything to get out of the situation, even though you're fighting so hard. The most disturbing thing about it is that you can feel some weird presence, as though someone or something is pushing you down on purpose.

I went into the kitchen and frantically started to make some food for the Christmas dinner in order to forget about this experience, but the whole evening I couldn't help, but think about all the horrible tricks your mind can play on you.

I might be a bit over-dramatic here, but it also got me thinking about my worst moments while living in Iceland. Sometimes I truly felt as though I was on the verge of being stuck forever in a black hole and the weird presence pushing me down in that case would be depression. I have been struggling with this particular mental health issue my whole life, but in Iceland it adopted a form I couldn't quite understand. On the one hand, I managed to operate in a more or less functional manner, I connected with people and made friends, I was able to play music live, to organise gigs and to write for a magazine, I earned money working in different jobs and I lived in a nice, warm house. On the other hand, my mind started wandering into really dark places and I felt haunted by the things it was coming up with. It all escalated in the summer months which felt very unnatural - not only during this time the island is graced with nearly never-ending daylight which is difficult enough to adjust to, but this year the summer actually never came and it was cold, rainy and windy almost every day (unlike the previous summer I spent in Iceland which had a much more positive vibe to it). I started crying a lot, mostly in private, but also in front of people, sometimes at work. I was constantly thinking about the end of the world and how humanity is working for it, about the Holocaust and the banality of evil, about the small things people do which have the most fucked up consequences, how we are all constantly hurting ourselves and everyone else. I was basically feeling sorry for myself, the people around me and the world in general. Fortunately, there was always someone or something that managed to snap me out of it, but nonetheless, the feeling of impending doom was always there, somewhere in the background.

I think I got myself into a place where I had nothing to look forward to. Before, when I started to have glimpses of this miserable state at my first job in Iceland at a guesthouse in the middle of nowhere, I could just quit, pack my bags and move to Reykjavik in hope of changing my situation for the better. After spending so much time in Reykjavik, a metaphor of a person as a strange flower or a plant which is only allowed to grow a little, but never to fully blossom, came to my mind, cause this is how I felt like - stunted and pointless.

Was it my fault that I was feeling this way or was it the place that was the culprit? Was I indulging in some masochistic drive or was it the alien/familiar surrounding that made me feel somehow imprisoned? I have no idea and I'm thinking that in order to describe it well would be to say that my relationship with Iceland became toxic and that it just stopped serving me well. I remember thinking that even the money I'm earning seems worthless, as I have no struggling family I could send it to (as many immigrants do), nor any elaborate plan what to do with it, and that it was unfair that I could earn so much more than a person doing the same job in my home country. This is an extremely privileged position to find yourself in and the awareness of it only made it feel worse.

On a lighter note, I remember that at some point I started laughing at myself and at the absurdity of the whole situation and maybe this was also the time I thought that I have to leave the island and go traveling. I'm counting my blessings, as I'm having a great and eye-opening time here in Mexico and maybe I wouldn't have appreciated it so much if I haven't been through all of this. Iceland made me feel a lot of bad things, but I learned a lot as well, had many amazing moments, and all in all, I think it changed my life for the better. It also gave me the courage and the financial means to do what I want right now, at least for some time. I still think that the place has a lot of potential and I'm keeping fingers crossed that with time, it's going to become a better version of itself. I'm glad I know people who are there and who are putting a lot of effort and energy into making it happen.

shadowplay

I managed to leave Mexico City. Before my departure I was feeling dizzy and confused, I knew that 5 weeks in the capital were enough for me at this point, but I was also scared of what is coming ahead. Reisefieber, as always.

The anxiety started to evaporate when I jumped on the bus to Guanajuato. I chose this town a bit up north as my next destination and I found a volunteering opportunity here at a guesthouse run by a professor of astronomy from a local university (fyi, I find those places on a website called workaway). 

It turned out that a girl I met at the hostel in Mexico City a week before is also volunteering now at the same place. It seems that coincidences and synchronicities happen a lot when you travel. It’s also very reassuring to meet other women traveling alone, doing their own thing, there’s an instant connection between us and I find those encounters really interesting. We are entering the unknown, dangerous terrain and we have to tread our own path, as there are still not that many depictions of other women doing similar things circulating in our culture. There are so many books written and movies made about men embarking on their solo journeys, while women wait for them at home or are there only to serve as a secondary addition to their adventures. Why not flipping the script.

//An anecdote from my first days in Mexico City just came to my mind. I was walking around the city and it was getting late, I was still overwhelmed by everything and not feeling secure at all. I went into a bookstore which was also a cafe and had a bar upstairs. A song by The Smiths was coming through the speakers and the familiar sound combined with the atmosphere of a bookstore which reminded me of bookstores in Warsaw I had been spending a lot of time in as a teenager, it all kind of made me calm myself down. I went up to the bar and to my amusement, it was called Bukowski bar. All of the drinks on the menu were inspired by famous literary figures who had some connection to Mexico, of course all of them male. I ordered a Kerouac cafe (iced coffee with a shot of vodka). Oh, well.//

I started writing this post after dozing off cocooned in the hammock at the terrace of the guesthouse. As I mentioned, the owner is an astronomer and the whole place is quite quirky. The rooms are named after planets and there is a dog here called Milky Way, a lively being obsessed with her own shadow, being very attentive to it as though she is trying to communicate or play with it. The view from the terrace is magnificent and the town is certainly one of the most beautiful I have ever been to, but of course there is a dark undertone lurking from beneath. It’s a colonial town, a very influential one during that period, with a tumultuous history of greed and abuse. As the area abounded in minerals, the Spanish colonisers took advantage of that. I’m reading in the guidebook that "Silver barons in Guanajuato city enjoyed opulent lives at the expense of indigenous people who worked the mines, first as slaves and then later as wage slaves. Eventually, resenting the dominance of Spanish-born colonists, the well-heeled criollo class of Guanajuato and Querétaro states contributed to plans for rebellion. (..) This anger was focused in the War of Independence. In 1810 rebel leader Miguel Hidalgo set off the independence movement with his Grito de Independencia (Cry for Independence) in nearby Dolores. Guanajuato citizens joined the independence fighters and defeated the Spanish and loyalists, seizing the city in the rebellion’s first military victory. When the Spaniards retook the city they retaliated by conducting the infamous ‘lottery of death,’ in which names of Guanajuato citizens were drawn at random and the ‘winners’ were tortured and hanged. Independence was eventually won, freeing the silver barons to amass further wealth. From this wealth arose many of the mansions, churches and theaters.”

I’m trying to wrap my head around the relationship this country has with death and violence, while at the same time being so colourful, full of life, populated by people who are known as one of the friendliest in the world. 

A passage from another book I've read on this trip ("Down and Delirious in Mexico City" by Daniel Hernandez): "Mexico City is by no means the most dangerous metropolis on earth. Cities such as Washington, D.C., for example, have higher homicide rates. But in the Aztec megacity death and murder acquire a disquieting intimacy with everyday life. In page after page, the red-note papers are filled with practically gleeful reports on the cruelest deaths, often accompanied by graphic photographs. (…) Bodies are found beheaded, burned in tanks of gasoline, mutilated, or beaten to death, blow by blow. There are robberies gone bad, executions carried out in shadowy alleys, and crimes of violent passion. In the age of narco warfare and the growing cult of the Santa Muerte—the unofficial saint of “holy death”—the killings numb us. News of a death to start off the day and news of a death before going to bed at night. Killings presented as common and as in-your-face as the traffic and smog.”

Here in Guanajuato, this picture-perfect, fairytale-like town in the mountains, you can find a really disturbing museum which puts on display over 100 naturally mummified bodies of people who died in the 19th and 20th century, so not that long ago. In the 19th century a new law came in that required residents to pay a tax for their burial. If the family of the deceased didn’t pay the tax, the body was exhumed and they found out that many of them became naturally mummified, so they put them in a museum next to the cemetery. It is one of the most famous tourist attractions in this area. I don't have it in me to visit the place, but the very apparent presence of death in Mexican culture is something that touches me on a deep level. 

further away

It’s been more than an month since I came to Mexico City. It’s a chilly evening (even though it is still sunny and warm here during the day in December, the nights get cold) and I’m seating on the terrace of the hostel where I’m volunteering in exchange of a place to stay for free. It’s situated in the hip district of La Condesa, an area which feels very different from the other central parts of the city, it is much greener and less chaotic, in the past it used to be a hippodrome which gives it a unique spatial arrangement. I’m looking at the palm trees growing tall in front of the buildings and listening to the sounds of the city that never sleeps, the traffic, the street vendors on bikes playing their advertising songs, the hum of the passersby and their conversations, the music coming from the balconies. I’m reminiscing about my Icelandic experience, because ultimately, when I think about it, the main reason why I’m here is that I had spent so much time there. 

I'm also feeling quite homesick today. Since I moved to Iceland almost 2 years ago, I have been visiting Warsaw frequently and each visit felt like gaining some ground beneath my feet, reminding myself of who I am and where I come from. After moving out of the island, I spent around a month in my hometown and once again, it was very difficult to leave, but at the same time I knew that I couldn’t go back home for good just yet, that there was, and still is, something pushing me to go and explore the unknown. 

Even though I was mostly feeling miserable during my last months in Iceland, right now it all makes much more sense to me and I am grateful for all the things that happened to me there. Maybe writing about it will be a good way to process it and maybe I needed to escape to another continent to be able to do just that. 

It still seems unbelievable that I’m here in Mexico. That I was able to save up money while working random service jobs, to buy a plane ticket and do whatever I want for at least half a year. That during one of the drunken Reykjavík nights I was listening to a friend talking about her time spent in Mexico City and I thought - ok, why not go there as well, and that I did. 

Before coming to the hostel in La Condesa, I spent the first two weeks in the overwhelming Centro Histórico. It’s a bustling area and stepping into it feels like logging into the internet, you can find everything here, but you have to dig your way through and there are a lot of distractions and dangers ahead. At first I was scared, asking myself repeatedly if I had finally lost my mind - I chose to relocate to the other side of the world, I’m not really able to communicate that well in Spanish and at the end of the day, I’m on my own here. I forced myself to jump into it with full force, renting a bike and cycling along with the traffic, going to the museums, the markets, the biggest local electronic music festival. Then I started meeting and connecting with people. It still feels unbelievable that I managed to also play a gig here. 

Tomorrow I’m leaving Mexico City to start my further journey into the country and I’m having a lot of emotions. Will changes always feel this terrifying? Life at the hostel resembles a bit life on an island, it’s a safe space in the midst of the chaotic city. I’ve met people here, from around the world, those who decide to exchange their daily routines for some excitement, one of the forms of escapism which might bring meaningful results, if you’re so inclined. I’ve observed that many travellers are operating in the mode I would call “the kindness of strangers”. The brief encounters away from the rules of “normal life” make most people much more open and kind to each other. Of course, if you are in this hostel bubble for a longer time, it all gets repetitive, you feel like having the same conversations over and over again. It means it’s time to move on and I feel ready to do so. I heard a lot of amazing stories about this country from locals and travellers alike and I have a skeleton of a plan for my further journey. Will see what happens.

One day I received a special gift. A guest at the hostel who was coming back from San José del Pacífico, the small town in Oaxaca state well-known as the place where you go to find magic mushrooms, gave me a whole jar full of them, as he was leaving and didn’t want to take them with him on the plane. It’s funny that they came to me first, as I was planning before to visit this town and I feel that I should get them back home and take them there, not anywhere elese. It's sad that I won’t have a chance to have this experience with the people in my life I care about the most, but maybe it's supposed to be this way.