I told Matt about Dolores. Feeling a big lump in my throat as I admitted this, "I think I'm jealous. But I feel like I have no reason to be. I don't like feeling this way about myself. I don't want to feel threatened by other women. I didn't used to be like this," I said, sobbing now.

"I need to go to London."

"I can't go to London with you," Matt replied, "I've asked my boss about relocating to the European office. There are no openings. What am I going to do in London? Do you realize how ridiculously expensive London is? What kind of job am I gonna find there? I don't want to be making eight bucks an hour bussing tables."

"I understand."

After a long silence and he said, "I don't believe in long distance."

I've heard this before and I don't blame him. It's so much easier to find someone else to go to dinners, movies, parties with. Why subject yourself to the suffering of absence and solitude when you're young and good-looking, while single people are hanging around bars/dating websites, looking beautiful and merely a click away?

"I don't believe in long distance either," I said.

That was when we both began to cry. We cried for a long long time, until we both became exhausted. By then, neither of us could fall asleep anymore. We got up from bed, and numbly went about cleaning up the apartment.

After a few hours, when we've both calmed down, Matt said,

"I don't see why two people have to break up when they clearly don't want to." I agreed.

***

Around that time, I received an email from my friend Josephine. She rarely wrote lengthy, personal emails, but something happened to her that was so extraordinary, she felt compelled to share the story with six of her closest friends.

Josephine wrote that she met a most impressive figure while holidaying on a remote Indonesian island off the coast of Flores and Komodo National Park. The owner of this island somehow really provoked her fascination. There was something about his aura that was so remarkable, that she literally had to write home about him. For one thing, he was completely bald (not that hair has to do with anything). He was in his forties. Could kayak and pilot a plane. He dressed the way Australian surfers dress for the beach – tank top, flip flops and hard abs. He greeted my friend in a manner that was far too friendly which led her to believe he was gay. So what was it about this guy? What made Josephine so moved every time she saw his face – a face so drenched with happiness and compassion?

Josephine finally asked him what was his key to happiness. He said he's been practicing Vipassana meditation for the past ten years and that has really helped him find inner peace. So right away, Josephine signed up for a 10-day introductory Vipassana course in Yangon, Myanmar. After which, she summed up her experiences and sent it to me.

I'd been curious about meditation ever since I'd read Eat Pray Love two years ago, and had tried to practice it with the help of YouTube videos. But I always thought I must be doing something wrong, because there must be more to meditation than just sitting against a wall and watching your breath.

Thankfully, now there's a course to provide instruction. During this moment of confusion in my life, maybe meditation would help me reach clarity, or at the very least, find inner peace.

Vipassana is a pali word native to India. It means insight into the true nature of reality. Since the practice first became popular in Burma, I thought their meditation centers were limited to Asia. But it turns out, Vipassana meditation centers can be found all around the world. I discovered one of them practically living in my backyard – just two hours north of Vancouver. But when I hopped on their website, the retreat calendar was fully booked until March. (I had no idea sitting in the woods in silence was such a popular sport.) So I put myself on the long waitlist for the next course in mid-January. With my visa expiring, and my life on hold indefinitely, I felt such a burning sense of urgency to find an answer. I couldn't bear to wait until March. I needed an answer.

But weeks passed without any word from the organization.

The introductory 10-day course provides a basic foundation for the technique and understanding around the practice. A lot of people are quite put off by the initial commitment of ten whole days just to get their feet wet. But after years of experimentation, Vipassana teachers discovered that ten days are the minimum amount of time necessary for the mind to settle down and work deeply within the mind-body phenomenon.

On the very morning of the retreat, I received an email. A spot has opened up in the course. They say it will be rigorous mental work and discipline. You have to wake up at 4 am every day. But ultimately, meditation purifies the mind, resulting in a person who's happy and balanced and full of compassion. Would I care to come? They don't know if it's too short of a notice, but...

Happy? Balanced? Purified mind?

Of course I'll come.

That afternoon, mom and dad drove me through icy highways (riddled with avalanche warnings) to this remote meditation center deep in the woods of northern BC. The center, a simple one storey building on the top of a hill, was covered in snow when we arrived. Inside, there's a dining hall serving delicious vegetarian food buffet style. A great meditation room where men and women are separated into two groups on either side, and we sit in long stretches of silence for one or two hours at a time. All day. Every day. Followed by an hour of lecture by the teacher shortly before we go to bed. The center can accommodate 60-80 students at a time. We sleep in a dormitory.

Strict rules of the house must be followed. No phone, no Internet, no books, no talking to anyone. None of these rules bothered me. In fact, I was very curious after all distractions are eliminated, what would happen when my mind descends deeply into silence.

During those ten days of meditative practice, I cried a lot, I thought a lot. Even though the point of meditation is to clear the mind, but thoughts inevitably seeped. As the Bhagavad Gita wrote, the mind "is as difficult to subdue as the wind." After the initial three days, I noticed I thought about only a few things. And I thought about them constantly. I thought about Matt, I thought about London. I thought a lot about when they are going to serve steamed kale with miso sauce again.

When the retreat was over and we were finally allowed to speak. Some of my peers reported experiencing excruciating pain, or ascending to meditative bliss, or noticing reduced symptoms of insomnia. To be honest, I felt nothing special afterward. I was kind hoping for a dazzling encounter with wisdom, maybe enhanced neural connections, or an enlightened epiphany, but I searched my body for special effects and felt vaguely, the same. I was thinking that I was probably too new at meditation. Or that I was too distracted, I didn't focus on my breathing enough, for long enough, to receive the benefits of the holy practice.

But something did happen shortly after meditation. Whether it was during meditation, or after, I can't remember, I thought about the girl I might become if I gave up London, and remained behind for the sake of love. As much as I tried to brush things off, let it roll off my shoulders like raindrops, rejections in the past year took a toll on me more than I realized. The shame of FCWR. The broken book deal. The countless submissions that had been lost with the wind. I felt each hurt inside, all of which simultaneously exploded in sadness on the dining room table, in the middle of the party on New Year's Eve.

In retrospect, my losing it at NYE was a wakeup call. Insidious insecurity doesn't serve anyone. It makes me unattractive and uninteresting to be around. Dating is about companionship. If I can't be good company, wouldn't Matt eventually want to break up with me? Wouldn't I want to break up with me? So the question boiled down to this, would I be working in London getting experience and collecting bylines, or would I be guarding Matt against the female species and shaking in fear every time a member of said species nears him?

It wasn't until much much later that I realized, perhaps the benefit of the retreat for me was quite simply coming to terms with my decision.

So I called Matt.

By this time, we'd already had many discussions about London, and a resolution inched its way toward the table. We loved each other. That was never the question. It's just we couldn't figure out how to bypass the distance. At the back of our minds, we feared temptations and loneliness would break us. But long-term relationships need to be able to withstand stress tests. What is a year? If we're meant to be, then we can do this. If not, then it's better to find out sooner, rather than later.

During an evening walk around my house, I said to Matt, "I will promise you this, whatever happens, I will not cheat on you. Even if you will never find out, I still won't cheat on you. Because I will know. I hope you will do the same for me. If while I'm away, you meet a girl you really like, please break up with me first, and then do whatever you want with her. I will do the same for you."

***

I booked my flight for the same week Matt was leaving for Brazil, for his third rotation. So he wouldn't feel left behind.

It was early March. The day before I left for London, Vancouver was unusually warm. 20 degrees and sunny. Matt took me to Fisherman's Wharf where we had our first super date that lasted twelve hours straight. We wandered in and out of little boutiques selling pretty stationary, and orange scented candles. We held hands and watched the seagulls mill about under the warm sunlight. We ate freshly baked scones with jam and clotted cream in a cute little house serving afternoon tea. For dinner, he took me to a lovely restaurant. He said it was the restaurant where his brother had his engagement party.

He'd often told me how I looked to him that night. Radiantly beautiful.

How it was an image forever etched in his memory.

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