Leaving the Shore
April 23, 2025
Dear Friends,
“And ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.”
Now, that depth pulls me forward — from one love to another.
I’ve reached a new ocean, where tomorrows are blue and eternal.
It has been such a long time since I shared my inner dialogues with you. That’s because I’ve been shifting toward a new chapter. I left home and moved to Australia almost a month and a half ago. Unspoken feelings became a field of sunflowers, faced down — as if they didn’t want to come out into the sun. Not to be revealed. Left in shadows and fear… stayed unvalidated.
As I moved through time and places, pieces from my heart were left behind. This is my attempt to go back in time, to find each of them — and bring the sun back to illuminate the past, to bring clarity.
Here is the first one I left… home.
The need for space slowly overcame the outwardness of my heart. And I became silent. I found myself watching the stream of events I’ve been going through — each day, more and more — until I burned out under the weight. Until I started to lose my senses, unable to find direction on my path.
Reflections gave way to ignorance. Feelings that needed to be embraced became tangled, and faded with time. Even though I had all the time to speak, I chose not to. Now, I have to dig deeper — to catch something, to lift it to the surface of my consciousness, and release it. The sudden shift from the lightness of being to the heaviness of being struck my inner world.
It’s okay, I choose to be.
Here, I surf with the waves of my spirit — rogue, deep, and raw — yearning to be reached by the ones on the shore.
The book I took with me on the flight somehow made me feel less alone. As Al Mustafa waited for that ship to take him to his dreams for twelve years, I have waited for five. He says: “How shall I go in peace and without sorrow? Nay, not without a wound in the spirit shall I leave this city.”
A heaviness in my heart followed me miles away — as if my heart was being pulled down by gravity. I felt something shrinking inside me. Everything was rising to one place.
Have I said “I love you” enough to my mom? Have I watched the sunsets with ease and joy from my window? Is there anyone I missed saying goodbye to? Will I ever find again what I left behind?
The last glance with my dog before I closed the door — she knew… that I was going soon. Those big eyes, looking into my soul — the lightness of being seen at home one last time.
Distance seems little when I write to you. As if those times you try to run toward your loved ones behind a car, or a train — like at the airport with my family. And the day before, I was running behind the bus, waving to my best friend. Until she disappeared, I kept waving. Until they disappeared, I kept walking backward, my face still turned toward them. I didn’t wanna leave — just to hold them in my sight a little longer...
Right after those moments, you find yourself in a void. Feeling missing. Feeling less. Waving is like trying to break down a second into fragments of sub-time — drawing out the timeline just a little bit more, one more breath in love. At those moments, when you wave, that’s the loudest way of saying “I love you.”
As if I am in Dante’s Purgatorio. In between places, I am no longer where I used to be, nor fully where I am going. The scales of past and future become unbalanced, disorienting my sense of being in time. And it felt like forever until I finally placed myself within these words.
How far does a person take you?
That far I’ve come — all the way to here, arrived at my dreams.
That’s why I want to say “we made it,” not “I.”
We both dreamed this, didn’t we?
Love, the root of my every action, grounded me in a new heaven where I am meant to be, as I was meant to be next to you once.
now I feel like a sunflower on the moon again.
Love From Australia,
Yağmur