The First Cut is the Deepest
“I would have given you all of my
But there’s someone who’s torn it apart
she’s taken almost all that I’ve got
But if you want, I’ll try to love again
Baby, I’ll try to love again, but I know
The first cut is the deepest, baby, I know
The first cut is the deepest”
Cat Stevens
Today I went to Smolyan bus station.
It’s a scruffy, desolate place in a small town in rural Bulgaria that has seen little change over the past five decades or so.
I went there and stood on the forecourt and looked at a bench. Then, I went to that bench, sat on it, and looked out at the forecourt. And after doing this, I left.
I was taken back a quarter of a century almost to the day to a pivotal moment of my life. For on that day twenty-five years ago, I took the bus from Plovdiv to Smolyan in order to meet someone. Her name was Ralitsa* and she was my penfriend. We had communicated for a year by text, letter and phone but now I was going to meet her face-to-face. And as the bus swung into the forecourt at Smolyan bus station, I saw her for the first time, sitting on that bench, waiting for me.
Following that meeting in Smolyan, I stayed with her in her aunt’s apartment in Smolyan and then at her family home in Stara Zagora. The following year, I returned, and we travelled around Bulgaria together again. Some months later, she then came to live with me in Leeds in England where I was at university. This was wonderful until, a week before the Christmas of 1999, it all ended in tragedy and I never saw her again.
So, why was the meeting in Smolyan so pivotal? After all, this was someone whom I’d only shared my life with for three years and for much of that period we weren’t even together.
Well, she was important because Ralitsa was my first love. There had been girls that I’d liked before; girls I’d had serious crushes on; girls I even thought I’d fallen in love with. But none of them came close to Ralitsa. I fell for her truly, madly, deeply. And when she left, it broke my heart.
Standing there on the forecourt, looking at the bench where once she had sat, I smiled to myself. It was not love at first sight. Indeed, I recall a slight disappointment in that she didn’t seem to be as pretty as she’d looked in the photos she’d sent. But that was Ralitsa all over. She was pretty, yet not conventionally so. Instead, she had a sort of aura about her that, even today, I struggle to describe. She attracted me, both before me and, I suspect, afterwards. During our travels in Bulgaria, I met several who clearly had a soft spot for her. She was a girl who had something about her. What she may have lacked in conventional beauty she more than made up for by her intellect, her charm and an unparalleled ability to almost become what you wanted her to be.
What do I mean by that? Well, after I’d travelled around Bulgaria with her, I truly believed that the gods of fate had put me in touch with the perfect woman. She was beautiful and smart, but more than that, we were into the same things, shared the same sense of humour and loved doing the same activities. She was all that a man could ever wish for. It was only later, after she had left me to marry a different guy and I saw her interacting with him, that I realised she became what the guy wanted her to be. She dressed differently, acted differently, suddenly sprouted a whole heap of new interests. A mutual friend had warned me about this. I hadn’t believed him until then. He said he’d seen it numerous times with different guys. I felt betrayed and confused. Ralitsa had cut me deeply.
I’d love to meet her again and to ask her: Who was the real Ralitsa? Were any of them real? Does she even know herself?
Such questions though, are for the man with experience, the middle-aged man. Back then I was different. Things were simpler. Good and bad, right and wrong, true and lies. Back then I could — and did — believe in perfection. And driving round the Smolyan region today, it’s easy to understand why. It’s far easier to believe in perfection when sitting in paradise.
Would I have felt the same had we met first in Leeds, or even Sofia?
All of this however, does not explain why the Smolyan meeting was so significant? After all, although we lived together briefly, Ralitsa never became my wife (even though I asked her to) and for the past twenty-two years we’ve had no contact whatsoever save for a couple of text messages during the lockdown. So, why the pilgrimage back to the bus station?
The key word there is, perhaps, “pilgrimage”. For when on pilgrimage, one meets all sorts of people. Some of them you walk with for a long time, get on well with and share a lot of experience, but they don’t necessarily leave much of an impression upon your life. Others, however, you chance upon briefly. A conversation in an albergue, a single day’s walking before they go on ahead, their pace being quicker than yours, and so on. Yet despite the short period of time, they rock your world. They say something that resonates, that etches a deep impression upon your soul.
And such was Ralitsa.
Following years of travels and encounters — some more unexpected than others, I have a belief about strangers. I believe that some people God brings into your life for a purpose. He sends them to you to complete a mission. Almost like an angel you might say, except that they don’t realise that they are the angel. They haven’t a clue that they are carrying out a holy task.
My best Camino example is an Australian lady called Jacquie who helped me on the climb up to Orisson. I believe that she was St. James (the clue is in the name), or at least, he was acting through her without her knowing. These people — Jacquie, Ralitsa and countless others — believe that they are acting of their own free will, doing what they want, whereas really, they are, unwittingly, carrying out a sacred mission.
So, what am I trying to say here?
Well, Ralitsa came into my life, and she taught me how to love which is, after all, one of the most fundamental lessons of all. But that was not all that she taught. Indeed, her most valuable lessons she imparted by leaving.
Some of these were negative. After she left, I struggled to trust. Looking back, I think the way that she did it was rather cruel and, in essence, extremely selfish. But by doing it, she made me face up to several realities in my life that I had hitherto avoided.
After she left, I fell into a deep depression. I pulled out of this through both my own efforts and the help of friends, some of whom I am still in touch with today. It was also at this point that I first started thinking about religion. Not seriously, not massively, but it was a start. My faith journey began.
I realised perhaps that perfection on earth might be illusion, but I still longed for that perfection. And I needed to look elsewhere.
Ralitsa also made me realise that I was not the great, exciting, wonderful person that I thought I was. I thought I was a smart guy; I thought I was interesting and intellectual who was cool to hang out with. But in reality, whilst I might have been smart, I never used that brain. Instead, I was a fat guy who spent most of his life drinking in the pub. She taught me that by bringing me to a low. By choosing over me a guy that I looked down on as thick and boring. Yet was I such great company? I remember sitting there and thinking, “If you prefer that, then God, I must be awful.”
Now, the thing is, there are probably a whole heap of reasons why she preferred him over me. People can leave you for reasons you’d never fathom. The guy who promises to walk with you the next day and then, in the morning has disappeared from the albergue, could have a thousand and one reasons for doing so, and most would not be about you being terrible company.
Of course, Ralitsa could have chosen him because she genuinely loved the guy, or just liked me and never actually loved me as she did him. That is probably the truth I reckon. And the reason why? She was very close to her dad and the guy she married was very similar to him. I, however, wasn’t.
Whatever her reasons were though, the effect on me was to make me want to change my life. After the initial depression and shock subsided, I started to set goals, make some serious changes. I decided to get fit and started to swim a mile a week. At the same time, I also decided that if I was the clever guy, I thought I was, then I should prove it by taking up my childhood dream of writing a book. So, inspired by Ralitsa, I wrote my first novel. Okay, so it was awful in both prose and plot, and at twenty-eight thousand words was more like a novella than a novel, but still, I did it.
And the feeling of achievement I got when it was completed far surpassed anything I have experienced before.
The swimming I didn’t keep up, but I did cut down on the drinking to the point that it is hardly part of my life these days. And I did keep up the writing, and not just that but reading too. Ralitsa used to talk about famous books that she’d read, and, to my shame, I was ignorant of all of them. So, I began to read the classics and I am still reading and writing vociferously today.
In short, Ralitsa made me the person that I am today. Without her, my life would have taken a far different course. In truth, she has affected me in so many ways.
The first cut is the deepest they say, and I agree wholeheartedly. The pain I felt when she left is unparalleled in my life. Even today, when I look at what she did more objectively and then at the life she has chosen for herself, I realise we were probably not suited at all. However, there is still a slight pang of “What if?”
But that is not important. What matters is that, like all pilgrims on the road, even those we meet briefly, our encounter with a stranger does indeed change us, and she definitely changed me. God brought her into my life for a reason and that was to ignite me, to get me out of the rut that I didn’t even realise I was in.
But before I close this meditation, there is one more aspect of my walking with Ralitsa that I wish to touch upon. In my essay This is the Captain of Your Ship…, I said that I believe that God brings people into our lives, not just for them to transform us, but so we may do the same with them: hence it’s always a two-way process.
And so, after more than two decades, whilst I have worked out what her mission was, I now wonder what mine was. Which saint or angel possessed me to impart a message to her, and what was that message? Because I do believe there was one and, in my actions, I do believe that I taught her something. I just don’t know what, and whether she ever took the message on board. Was there something I said one day, or something I did, that caused her to think, that transformed her life? I’d love to know but I’ll never will. Perhaps, if there’s an afterlife, I’ll find out, but until then, it remains a mystery.
After leaving Smolyan, like with all pilgrims, I moved on. I drove my hire car through the Rodopi Mountains and then, passing through one village, I spied a beautiful old church. So, I pulled up by the side of the road, went in and prayed.
In Eastern Orthodox style, I lit a candle before the icon of the Mother of God and left it there flickering, dedicated to Ralitsa.
Ralitsa: a woman who changed the world in ways in which she shall never know…
*Name changed to protect identity
Mapped out 27/07/2023, Smolyan to Shiroka Luka, Bulgaria
Written 31/07/2023, Smallthorne, UK
Copyright © 2023, Matthew E. Pointon