When I was 22 I went to visit Bulgaria, where I was born, with my boyfriend at the time. We traveled to Sofia, stayed at a hostel, went to the black sea where we got an awful digestive infection and then made it home to Gabrovo, the city of my parents' birth and where much of mu childhood took place.
We stayed with my paternal grandmother who raised me when my parents emigrated and I was left behind. I have a special connection with this grandmother. In a sense she rescued me and she was also capable of giving me a quality of love and nurturing and understanding that I never quite could get from my parents.
My boyfriend of those years was my second ever love but he was somewhat mentally ill, depressive and abusing marijuana.
When it was time for our flight back about a week later, I wasn't ready to leave but I was very conflicted because he was putting a lot of pressure on me to go back with him, taking it personally that I wanted to stay (he felt he needed to go back for the start of his school trimester) and pulling his manipulative withdrawal tricks when I mentioned it.
But my grandmother was in her 70s. She lived with my parents in the USA and she was only very rarely in Bulgaria. It felt like if I didn't take this chance to be with her and revisit some very special moments in my favorite city Gabrovo, the home of my entire blood line, then I may never get the chance.
Thus conflicted, my boyfriend and I left for Sofia to catch the scheduled flight back to London where we would stay with a friend for a few days before flying on to New York. I felt responsible about having made these arrangements for us to drop in on her and didn't want to change them now or back out or make my boyfriend half to change his flights or have him stay with strangers. I prayed for a sign that I would do the right thing, that I would know what to do. Looking back now it seems it was a matter for the heart versus a matter of the mind but at the time it seemed a very hard decision to make and I felt if I left my boyfriend and went back, he might break up with me. But while we were in Sofia walking around foraging for breakfast in the capital that morning, I stepped away from my boyfriend to go to a store and I ran into my mother's best friend from child hood, right there on the street. And I was alone. I thought she was an angel. I knew she must be the sign I had been praying for. In our greeting hellos - she hadn't seen me since I was a child - I described my situation. Her response was that having the freedom to travel as we please was one of the reasons herself and my parents had worked so hard to leave communist Bulgaria. So that the children would have a better life and the freedom to do what they want.
I knew that was my answer. We said goodbye and I went with my boyfriend to the airport. In line I was so tense I actually had an orgasm when I told him that I will accompany him to London and stay there with him at my friend's house but four days later when it was his flight for New York, I would return to Bulgaria.
He sulked but I did just that. Returning was a life-changing decision. Not only did I get to enjoy some deep and special alone time with my beloved grandmother in her home and the home of my refuge when my parents, as I thought then, had abandoned me, but I also got to spend time with some friends from childhood and make a very special friend who to this day guides loves and supports me on my artistic and personal journey as I do her.
All in all it was a miracle and I am very grateful.
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