Day 5 on Grand Cayman was definitely an interesting one. Beyond the fact that I awoke this morning with a mind-boggling amount of physical pain throughout my body, I did experience some pretty wonderful snorkeling a little later, once I left my room for the day.
To be perfectly honest though, I really wish that somehow this island air, the ocean and all its surroundings was going to be the catalyst I needed to get over this hump in my healing process. But so far it unfortunately hasn’t, yet I remain hopeful that being here is still helping me somehow.
I know many of you have either asked me directly or wondered silently, what exactly it is I’ve been trying to heal from. As best as I can put it, I’ve been doing everything I can to heal these past bunch of years from all of the negative things I put my mind, body, and soul through. Many don’t understand that living in addictions, doing toxic behaviors, and holding onto anger and resentment truly do poison oneself right on down to the cellular level and correcting that is not a simple process. It involves changing everything from who you spend time around, to what you eat, to what spiritual routines you do, to what holistic healing processes you choose to undergo, and so on and so forth. Who I am today is by far completely different from who I was when I began this journey in April of 2010. Alas, I was hoping to get a break from this healing process while here in Grand Cayman, but sadly it doesn’t work that way and what I continue to endure has been equal to what I’ve gone through at home, if not greater.
With that being said, I’ve been spending a lot of time in the ocean since arriving here on the island because I do find it soothing to me on every level, as I mentioned in yesterday’s posting. That’s why I’m generally out in the ocean as soon as I’m done with my morning spiritual routines each day, trying to connect to something greater than myself. Today, I swam through the most beautiful schools of fish who seemed totally unbothered by my presence. I touched their bodies and fins and almost felt as if I was a part of their cheerful groups. Some of the schools I even swam through had fish that were over three feet long!
I also enjoyed today looking at all the different types of coral and plant life that grow in the ocean. The colors of all of it on a bright sunny day are truly spectacular. I especially like the purple-colored plants. I want to mention I did have a quick underwater chuckle today when I was silently observing one particular area of the ocean floor. There I saw a set of eyes peaking out from a tiny cave and as I peered closer, a huge orange fish with the most amazingly red dorsal fin suddenly emerged and greeted me. Seeing things like this when snorkeling involves a lot of patience because quite often the coolest things appear only when you stop moving around and just observe for awhile. Sometimes that’s hard to do though if the waves are thrashing at you like they were at one point for me today. In fact, I had a little scare when I abruptly got caught in a riptide and began being pulled farther out into the ocean. Thankfully, I’ve been swimming my entire life to know what to do in circumstances like this and quickly caught a wave crashing nearby to ride it back in.
Aside from snorkeling today, I did also listen to a presentation for a potential time share ownership here. While I know I told myself last year I wouldn’t do one of these again, I opted to try it again this time because the people here were so overly friendly. Ironically, it actually ended up being rather fun and neither my partner nor I experienced any sales-pressure tactics. The reason why we actually did this was we’ve been considering looking to invest in a specific resort destination to go back to year after year that will save us money when doing so. Timeshares in the long run can do that. While we did end up buying after the presentation was over, we did receive a nice thank you from them, which was two free sting-ray adventure tickets, which we are going to do tomorrow.
There was also one more noteworthy thing that happened today and that was the free dinner my partner and I were treated to at the resort restaurant. Given the lock-out from our room we experienced yesterday, management felt we deserved a free meal on them due to the inconvenience. It was very enjoyable sitting out on the restaurant balcony tonight under the full moon overlooking the ocean while dining on some pot stickers, a strawberry salad, chicken curry vindaloo, and coconut crème pie. I should mention though that we ended our evening just after eating our huge meal watching the finale of The Biggest Loser! LOL.
So while I may continue to endure extremely intensive pain, even here in beautiful Grand Cayman, I remain thankful to my Higher Power for all of the things I got to enjoy today both under the sea and above.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson