I made it to Brazil!

My heart in my throat, the day arrived. Deryn and I arrived at OR Tambo with time to spare... luckily!

I get to the check in counter and the nice lady asks me for my Yellow Fever vaccination certificate. "What certificate?"

It seems that my travel agent had omitted that valuable little piece of information. I cannot allow you to board your flight without it.... Oh goodness! What do I do? I think the clerk saw the absolute terror and disappointment on my face and so she sent me down to the clinic where I was duly vaccinated against Yellow Fever.

The staff at the clinic were all so professional, warm and friendly.

 I have two seats to myself although the plane was quite full.

Sitting and waiting on the runway, I notice lots of planes lining up behind us. Goodness me! But lots of planes fly out from OR Tambo... I really wasn't thinking very clearly... I could not believe that I was actually on my way to Brazil. I could only describe the racing of the A330's engines (all eight of them!!) as slow and quiet in comparison to my heart. Oh man! I will never find takeoff as even vaguely pleasant. It makes me dizzy! lol 

"We are expecting some turbulence along the way. Our expected time of flight is 10 hours and 46 minutes. Overcast and cloudy in Sao Paulo. Sit back, relax and enjoy our hospitality"

"ARE WE NEARLY THERE?  Nah, not even at cruising level yet.

Got my first taste of Brazilian Portuguese... they do all the announcements in both English and BP. Goodness me, how am I ever going to understand? lol

I look around me. The cabin crew in their blue. The SAA logo on the wingtip which is directly in line with me... and somehow, for the first time in a long time, I am Proudly South African.

"I am really nervous and my mouth is dry, may I have sparkling water please?"

"Ma'am, why don't you take an extra bottle of water, stretch across the seats and don't even think that you are flying"

Yes dear!

We eat a really delicious meal and then it is lights out and shutters down. Well, so much for reading my book. The hours flew past... pardon the pun!

I had previously watched an episode of Aircrash Investigation where a plane overshot the runway and landed up on the highway in Sao Paulo... but this was a perfect landing.

I honestly felt like I had been here before...

I got to practice some "obrigado's" during my search for the shuttle to the hotel.. It really was a unique experience not being able to understand just about anything. Oh and where is this lovely warm Brazilian weather? I was freezing!!

Lovely hotel, good night's rest and off on the second leg of my journey in the morning.

And so it began....

I arrived back in Pretoria from a brief sojourn in Mossel Bay with my youngest daughter, Alison. The time spent in Mossel Bay, should have been enough to open my eyes, but clearly I needed to learn more. What I learned is that no one really gives a damn. I am no one’s responsibility. I am in this alone. Yet, there was Paulo… always Paulo. He became the focus point of my life. I loved him. I hated him. I would not have married him if he was the last man on earth! He was bombastic and demanding. He was jealous and self-absorbed. But always, there was Paulo… I could not get this man out of my head and heart. We surely hold the all-time record for the most deletes and blockings on Facebook. WE SIMPLY COULD NOT FUNCTION WITHOUT EACH OTHER. The phrase “can’t live with you, can’t live without you” became real. Let me tell you about Paulo… It was the end of the year in 2011. It was my father’s 80th birthday celebration. The entire family would be there. But I would not be there. I had too much pain and anger in my heart to go and be there, it would have been hypocritical … That was the first time that I felt my life had no meaning. I wanted to die. I was too scared to end it all. I bought a couple of bottles of Amarula and whiskey and wine. I got horribly drunk. I stayed drunk that weekend. Monday evening, 1st January 2012, I sat in my room trying to pull myself together for work the following day. I logged into Facebook. A friend request from Paulo Rogerio sat there staring at me. Hmmm … A Brazilian. Never met one of those before. I looked at his photo. I looked at his name. And I thought to myself “Good heavens what do we have here?” I had had so many of those dating con artists hitting on me. I really did not need another one. So I did what many would describe as silly, I accepted his friend request with a note: “We can be friends, but I am not looking for a relationship”. Even I thought that was peculiar but I did not really give a damn what he thought. Like it or leave it my boy. The following day he replied: “Well I only want to speak with a native English speaker as I am learning to speak English” Cool. Nice to meet you Mr Rogerio. It took the best part of a week before we connected to chat. I just did not make any effort to download MSN Messenger, he could wait. He was almost becoming frantic at this stage… So, I was sitting at the office one afternoon about half an hour before I would leave for home. An email popped up on my BlackBerry “PLEASE!! When will you talk to me???” Aaarggghhh!!! I decided to download MSN onto my phone. And there he was waiting…. It went something like this…….. “At last!!!! I thought you were never going to come online to talk to me!!” Paulo was very fond of exclamation marks in those days. I looked at the words and thought to myself “goodness, one of those impatient types”. And I was to prove myself right. We typed all the usual pleasantries. Then I said that I have to go home now, and would it be alright to continue the conversation when I got home? He was okay with that. I got home and logged online on my laptop. It was an extremely pleasant chat. He was interesting. He was interested in everything. We talked about our countries; we talked about music; we talked about the weather; we talked about anything and everything. I was quite intrigued. He was very refreshing. We talked for a few hours and then he had to go to work. He worked nights, every second night. So we would talk again the next night. The next day, I found myself thinking about him a LOT. I could not wait for 3pm when we had our next date. The day dragged, I could hardly contain myself for the time to pass. 3pm arrived! We had another really, really nice chat. He was really very sweet AND charming. I can’t really remember when it changed……. When it changed from “just a nice person to talk to”.

How it all began

I watched the movie, Eat Pray Love with total fascination. I read the book, Eat Pray Love with a hunger that I cannot describe. Why could I not do that? Where is my destiny? Who am I? The similarities between what Elizabeth Gilbert wrote and what was going on in my mind, as I read her words, were beyond verbalisation… I began to dream. I could do this and I would do this. “How, when, where and who” buzzed in my brain. But I began to dream. My life, at the time of both watching and reading Elizabeth’s story, was the loneliest and most isolated existence of my entire life. There was no one with whom I could talk this through…. There was no one with any true interest. But it was all part of the great plan, I now believe. I had to do this alone. My background is a series of messes and mishaps. I do not believe that it was possible for me to have made more bad choices and decisions than those I did make. I went from one disaster to another. It would be the complete and utter truth to say that I lived my life alone… I lived it unguided and went into everything I did like a raging bull in a china shop. Oh they say that we should not blame our parents or our upbringing, but I have to state categorically, who, or what, the hell else do we blame? Somewhere over the past 2 years, I completely lost my incentive to write and record. It was as though I had died. My spirit had gone on vacation it seemed. I even lost my love of music…. The lyrics pained me too much…