God hides the fires of hell within Paradise.
— Paul Coelho
In the early ninties, a man I was dating, I’ll call him Nick, invited me to his private island in Tahiti. His mother was Tahitian and a friend of hers had left the island to Nick in his will. He descibed the woven
thatched huts he had built there: a kitchen, a bedroom and a living space. And he was still building. I was thrilled to be getting away from my own life. I was feeling lost, I didn’t have a place to live and I was afraid of being alone. I wanted to leave it all behind.
I packed bathing suits, shorts, t shirts, cotton pants and blouses, books to read and writing pads and pens. I threw a couple of
long-sleeved t shirts in my suitcase but I probably wouldn’t need them. I was headed to an enchanted garden with warm trade winds, blue skies, crystal clear oceans, white sand beaches and making love under the stars. Nick knew Marlon Brando who owned land in Tahiti. I was about to meet Marlon Brando. I couldn’t have been more excited.
We took a night flight and arrived in Papeete early in the morning. It was still dark when Nick rented a car for the hour drive to a motor boat that would take us to his island. He fell asleep twice on the drive and I had to grab the wheel and wake him up before we skidded off the dirt road. We got into the motor boat and took the ten minute ride to the island where I’d be staying for two months.
As we approached the island, a Tahitian man, Henri, with legs like tree roots was waiting for us. It looked like a dream as we exited the boat and three little kittens ran over and brushed against my legs. Nick pointed to the bedroom and told me I could settle in while he and Henri took a walk around the island so he could see how the building was going. I gazed around the room. There was a large bed and no doors. There were no closets or shelves so I’d be living out of my suitcase but it was a small price to pay for the beauty that was all around me. I sat at the edge of the bed, closed my eye, listened to the tides and felt a sting on my face. I swatted a mosquito. It bled on my cheek.
It took fifteen minutes for Nick to walk the perimeter of the very small island. When he got back, he made coffee and toast, we ate and he said he’d see me later as he started to take off with Henri again to
fell coconut trees and work on the huts. “Where’s the bathroom?” I asked. He pointed and walked away. I headed over there. It was a hole in the ground, one of the many things Nick had forgotten to tell me. There were no toilets. No running water. The winds blew huge coconuts off the palm trees. The kittens had fleas. Wild chickens and roosters squawked and crowed. There were holes in the ground that Tupa crabs had dug. I decided to go for a swim but thick, slimy black
slugs were lying at the sea bottom. Most daunting of all, the mosquitos rode the trade winds and smashed up against my face.
I put on a long pair of pants and a long sleeved t shirt, I lit a mosquito coil, sat on the floor beside it and cried. I didn’t know what to do with myself so I stayed there until Nick came back around
dinnertime. We ate and Nick was so exhausted from the work he had done, he fell asleep in minutes. No making love under the stars. I lay on my back, watching the mosquitos, little vampires, make their way through the netting and land on me for a blood fest.
When I got up in the morning, my face was completely swollen. Nick looked at me and said, “Wow!” and he was off with Henri. He told
me that Tupa crabs attracted mosquitos so I walked around the island with a BB gun, slid it into their holes and shot them. I didn’t do it for long because it felt like I was committing Tupa genocide. That evening, when I told Nick I’d been mediaiting at the top of the white sand beach, he said, “Who needs to meditate in Paradise?”
He never took me to meet Marlon Brando. Or to the Gaughin house. He stayed on the island and built up his home. He was absent most of the time and after my first week, I wrote a poem called “The Agony of Paradise.” I was lonely and felt defeated. I had hoped to leave my life behind, but there was no getting away from me. I was afraid ask for what I needed. I was afraid to tell Nick how I felt, and he didn’t notice. For me, this was hell, not Paradise. After a month, when I told him I needed to leave, he looked stunned. “Aren’t you happy?” he asked me. On the flight back, I felt disappointed in myself. If I couldn’t be happy in Paradise, where could I be happy?
I figured that one out. The island was Nick’s Eden but\ it wasn’t mine. I couldn’t live someone else’s life. I had to create my own. I
rented an apartment when I got back. It was no frills but I was happy to write during the day and lie in my own bed in the evening. There were no insects eating me or roosters crowing as I sat back against my down pillows with a cuddly cat beside me that didn’t have fleas. My mosquito bites healed. My loneliness was filled up with my friends. I started speaking up and asking for what I needed. I stopped running away from myself. I came to understand that it’s okay to need things, that Paradise is not a place. It’s a state of mind. There will always be people who have more than you do but that has nothing to do with Paradise. It isn’t about perfection. It’s about finding a way to speak up and work out your differences. Where giving and caring bring a lot of joy. It’s a place to make peace with yourself. A place to find your own truth and live in it and by it.
Voltaire said, “Wherever my travels may lead, Paradise is where I am.”
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