Night falls very quickly in Bali. Second by second you can see the light trickle down into warmer and then cooler colours until it’s dark. It feels like it happens in minutes. And there I am, cross legged in a cafe in Seminyak, a white beach in Uluwatu, legs in the water in Sanur and wondering at the place in the world I am. Alone. A dot in the continent. The world I knew before is halfway around the world, in another time zone, early morning. I’m alone in Indonesia and I do what I want, when I want it. On a summer day, after coming out of an icy air conditioned supermarket and back into the heat, my mother would say how it was like getting off an aeroplane. Like stepping off the plane and feeling the wall of heat on your tired face for the first time. But I’d never experienced that. So when the Singapore and Bali heat hit me in the face all I could think was how it felt like stepping out of Safeway in July.
I was pacing a damp hotel room in Sanur. I’d been in Bali for less than twenty four hours and in that time I had unexpectedly become a solo traveller. My flatmate had a problem with her passport in Berlin and I’d had to leave her sitting on the floor of the airport to dash to my flight. I’ve left the UK twice - both times as a teenager, so I was totally green. I’d got to Singapore, got to Bali and then found myself kicked out of this beautiful place we’d booked because my card declined. I was phone-less and alone in Indonesia and had been awake for well over 30 hours. It was my birthday in fifteen minutes. I’m full on crying, the smell of damp so sharp and sour that my eyes and throat and nose stung with it. Cockroaches were crawling in the bathroom next door and I was the only person in the hotel. Crying and pacing on my birthday-eve. And I was asking the ceiling, lifting my hands and everything, to ask: what am I supposed to be learning? What are you trying to teach me? Full-on tears, I turned back to my phone, a little window of communication via wi-fi to my friends back home. I’ve told a couple of them the situation but am trying to hide how upset and frightened I am. And when I check my phone I find such loving, generous things from them. It’s so unsubtle that you couldn’t find it in a Lifetime movie. I start hysterically laughing through the tears and turn back to the ceiling to say: ok! I get it! I am supposed to be learning that I’m not alone!
I use the money my friends send me, as they tell me to, to book back into the hotel I got kicked out of and desperately try to find a taxi to take me. To no avail. None of them will pick me up. I try to sleep on the bed (bed too damp to get into) but when I pull the curtain closed, cockroaches fall out and in a fit of exhaustion I say fuck it, and start the forty minute walk to the new hotel at 1am in the morning, with no phone signal on what is now officially my birthday.
As I set off into the most humid, wet, hot night imaginable, sweating so much it looks like I’ve walked out of a rain shower, I don’t know much about the Bali dogs. They look like social, playful puppies but they are also ‘fear defensive’ and very territorial. I find this out the hard way when I find myself at the end of a dark, shack lined road, with a snarling, growling dog at the end of it. I have to hide behind a big blue tarp that is hung up on somebody’s porch for ten minutes before I can run off without it seeing. Then I end up on a main road with no pavement where I get followed by another dog across the divider. I’m regretting my careless choice to not get a rabies shot when a kind stranger pulls up on a moped next to me and asks, bewildered, where I’m headed.
So that’s how I end up on the back of a strangers moped at 2am on my birthday, the balmy, Bali night air in my hair, so tired that I’m seeing things moving out the corners of my vision, on the way to the nice hotel.
And fast forward halfway through the trip I began to wonder: shouldn’t I be having a life changing experience? Sure it’s beautiful and I’ve cleared another crisis and feel like I can do this on my own and am in paradise but I’m not being brought to my knees in bliss having cracked the code for happiness and peace. Why do I feel like the same person wherever I go?
On my last night on the island I found myself at an AA meeting, in Seminyak’s very own ‘Just for Today’ building. At my first ever online meeting, back when I was unsure I wanted to stop drinking, unsure if I could stop drinking but sure that I wanted to want to stop drinking, a man had shared about always having a home in the rooms. He travelled for work and wherever he went in the world, he always found a meeting. And in the meeting, he always found home. That meant nothing to me at the time. I was still storing wine and empty carrier bags to vomit into beneath my bed. I had only left the UK twice and only as a teenager. I didn’t understand how anybody could find home anywhere when I could barely find it at my own home. But that evening I walked through the hot night air, that hums with insect chirping and rustling leaves and feels so very alive, into an air conditioned room where I was greeted with fellows handshakes. Where I knew the codes and the way to be honest. Where I listened to other people who knew where I’d been. I listened to others who were all tanned and healthy looking try to live better, with more honesty, presence, gratitude and meaning. I came away thinking about that God Shaped Hole that I’d tried previously to fill with alcohol and drugs and self-harm and bulimia, which I’d still not quite filled with anything else yet. A tender God Shaped Hole that was asking for faith and meaning and trust. And how it was true - it is still true - that I’d stopped drinking but I hadn’t come clean yet. I hadn’t embraced the love in AA, I hadn’t begun to trust my higher power with any tenacity or determination. I’d become spiritually lazy because I feared trusting again, still holding that part of myself back in case I decided to dive headlong into a bag of powder or a wine bottle. In case I got hurt again. Losing my thin faith in the past had been so painful. I am scared to have faith in my higher power. That God Shaped Hole is bruised and tender and asking for me to feed it. Because isn’t that the whole point, that having faith is never easy? That having faith isn’t this fairy tale airy fairy fool's choice? That faith doesn’t just appear and flow through you? It’s hard. It’s hard and requires upkeep and dedication and routine.
Canang sari are dotted everywhere in Bali. They make sporadic patterns on every sidewalk and pavement and beach, upon stairs and walls and ledges. They are little open boxes made with palm or banana leaves, filled with colourful flowers and braidings, small pieces of fruit, incense, and sometimes the odd rolled cigarette and bank note. They are daily offerings amongst scattered yellow frangipani. Devotion, gratitude, faith.
