I am a woman. I was born in a period when woman emancipation and woman's rights were a given matter. I was taught that women are capable of everything they set their minds on and that we are no less than any men. I know we aren't the same as men and I do not support extreme feminist attitudes, I believe that our differences help us living together and keep us united. But all my life, I rarely met a woman that had the character to fit in my idealized version of "girl equals power"... I have very few girlfriends, and as i get older, I put less and less effort in making new ones...I'd rather hang out with the boys, because I can relax and forget about the constant stabbing in the back, nasty comments about non-present friends and judgmental gossiping...I feel that something is lacking in my life, and once in a while I feel like I cant trust any of the woman I know. I am told I am to demanding, I am a high maintenance friend or I expect too much of them...but why then, doesn't this happen with male friends? Recently I found myself in an argument with a girl which isn't really my close friend and the situation escalated to the point I no longer want to hang out with her or with my group of friends that know her...I feel like I was crucified publicly by being honest with her, got a massive "Fuck You" in my face, and now I have to bear the comments of my close friends' about what she thinks happened...(coincidentally or not, a different version of mine..) This situation, although different in context, feels like a deja vu of past girlfriends that one way or another stabbed me in the back and massively disappointed me. Although I don't want to pretend I am a victim or that I am better than anyone else, I cant help but feel sad for the fact that women just can't support each other....I know I wont for most of them.... The number of bitchy girls i have met, drastically surpasses the number of genuinely interesting, honest and even polite women I know and although in principle, I dont even feel like being their friends, I am a woman and I should keep on trying right? There is really no conclusion for this post, but I know one thing, the few girls that I believe are worth fighting for will stab me in the back again and bitch me as usual, but I will put up with it, and I will forgive them in the end...unfortunately, there will always be a huge percentage of women that are just not worth confronting...
I have a stable job, a lovely daughter, I am surrounded by friends and people I enjoy being with, but most of all I don’t regret my life.
I have embraced and accepted that everything that happens to us is meant to happen for a purpose and I don’t believe in coincidences. I treasure my memories as if they were delicate flowers living in the garden of my mind. I am afraid of losing them, yes, because they are as much part of me as I am part of them and losing them would mean losing myself; an unbearable idea. Although I nurture my past as I tend to say I do, I do not rely on it to move on. I look forward embracing what life has to give and I have learnt to separate things that are gone from the ones that are yet to come.
There is one thing I miss though, and that’s my sister Ahina.
I was born in a small island in Hawaii, Kaua’i or “The Garden Isle” when she was already a year old. We shared a unique connection comparable to what twin siblings do. People would mistake our names and although she was older, she was skinnier and shorter than me. That didn’t mean she was the weaker one. She had energy to light up a fire and keep it going for a great while, or her name wasn’t “Ahi” meaning fire in Hawaiian. Our mother had decided she would have two daughters from a young age, and our names were both chosen since then. Moana and Ahina, Water and Fire. And as destined, we were both to become quite different, needless to say, quite the opposite of one another.
Some people believed my mother had divine powers and many neighbors from the village would come to her asking for advice. Even people from other islands would summon her, not even knowing her name. They only knew how to find her due to her scar. Mother had a scar on her left cheek resembling a Plumeria, some ubiquitous flower in that area. In fact, there were so many of those around our garden that every night sphinx moths would fly around, lured by the sweet, fragrant odor spreading from the “Lady of the Night” *. On those nights our house appeared to glow and its contours viewed from a distance seemed to smudge with the surroundings. Mother loved those nights. In fact, as the Plumeria, she was more active during night time. She was also more beautiful during those dark hours. Her jet-black, straight hair shone with the moonlight and she would leave the house to wander the beach until dawn. She would come back without a sound, her steps light as a cat, carrying her straw basket full of secrets I am still oblivious of.
She didn’t speak much and most of the time her presence soothed the house as a flat sea calms the sand. I couldn’t blame the neighbors for their insisting adulation…many times as I was growing I wished she was there so I could rely on her too and ask her for guidance, comfort.
Only once was I allowed to witness her wrath and it was exactly how I thought it would be. A majestically harsh thunderstorm would posses her and take away my mother. Her mark would become bright red and although I only saw it once, it made me respect her and fear her forever. Most of the times her mark was dark as charcoal and just before she died it took on a dim grayish color. I was four at the time.
Father was broken hearted. He was a fisherman and his whole life was my mother. He started drinking and his face deformed with the sadness that was going on inside his heart.
My sister took care of me for a while. Although we were both quite young, we understood our misery and relied on each other to make our lives less dry. She would make me laugh till I dropped and we would spend entire afternoons picking flowers around the house and making necklaces. We would go to our aunt’s house and observe her as she took care of the plants on her garden. We were often mesmerized by the white Hibiscus that grew around the place. It seemed magical to us that such a fragile structure could be that strong and useful in so many ways. We would tuck a flower behind our ears making fun of each other, guessing who would get married first, to regret minutes later when we’d realize we had killed it.
Auntie was really kind and she would cook dinner for us and Father. For reasons I don’t know she decided both me and Ahina should start school together and when I became six, we started going to school. This was the beginning of the end of our relationship. What until then were two merged personalities and two people thought to be one, became two separated entities, slowly growing apart.
On our first day of school the teacher realized Ahina was left handed. By then, a left handed person was still considered an abnormality, something to be corrected by all means. Ahina struggled to change her habits for a while, but with no results. The teacher would become irritated and at times beat her hands with a straw; other times ridicule her for being different while encouraging the rest of the students to do the same. Ahina’s spirit wasn’t the kind to stay put and swallow the scorn, she would react violently similarly to my mothers outbursts of rage and often Auntie or Father were called to the school to take her home. Needless to say she didn’t want to go to school. Sometimes she would ask me to lie for her and tell the teacher she was sick that day so she could wander around by herself. I would do as told. Those days my mind wandered as well and I couldn’t study. I would daydream of Ahina playing on the beach, adventuring into the wild mountains and meeting strange creatures that in my mind were all but unimaginable. My mind would drift for a couple of minutes or until the teacher asked me some question and I couldn’t answer. Although life wasn’t easy I kept being an average student and had little problem coping with the situation…at least when I was left alone, because from then on, Ahina as I knew her was gone.
We wouldn’t play as much together as before and most of the time I would do the house chores while she wandered the beach as if in search of something. She would come late when Father was already half-asleep from the bourbon shots, and occasionally she would carry with her a dark bag full of things I only knew what were a year or two later: Shells. She would collect shells, pebbles, pretty stones from the shore. She would keep most of them in a red velvet box hidden under her bed and some were used to make earrings, bracelets or hair pins. When I discovered them I was fascinated by the intricacy and delicacy of those pieces. I kept my discovery a secret because Ahina had become more and more silent towards me and whenever I discovered a new piece I would admire it for a while wondering what she had thought when she had made it. Although we didn’t talk much to each other, I could somehow feel closer to her, as if the small jewelry pieces were the shattered expression of her thoughts.
During that period I became a sort of hermit. I withdrew to myself and spoke only when spoken to. I read books, I loved biology books and I would get lost in the pictures of plants, flowers or trees. When I started my first herbarium Ahina was 10 and she would smoke cigarettes with the boy next door behind our house. I would observe them from the kitchen, through the window and day by day I saw her changing. First her clothes, then her hair, later she would wear makeup and her breasts were growing. We rarely talked those days. I felt so childish and dull. She was beautiful. Her silhouette resembled my mother in every way and I felt no more than a shadow of the deceased.
One day I woke up with the strike of a lightning. It was one of those tropical storms that come suddenly and unearth the roots of the trees. Many houses were destroyed on the shore, trees fell down and the place was filled with clutter…that night Ahina disappeared.
The last time I saw her she was cheery with her cheeky smile and she was walking towards the beach. She looked back, stared at me and showed me her perfect white teeth. By then she was 14. Nobody knows what happened to her.
I mourned her loss for about a year and blamed my Father for her disappearance. My blossoming years were spent mostly in my room, with the storm shutters down as if I was waiting for another storm to come and make me disappear forever as well. I was too scared to live and too scared to die. I studied and after some months I decided that I had to leave the island as soon as I could. If I wanted to have a sparkle of hope, if I wanted to build a life, I would have to leave. But how or where I didn’t know.
So, I went back to school in order to finish it. My life went on as usual. I was a regular student, no great ambition, no boyfriend or interest in having one, no friends in particular. I considered myself a pretty tedious human being for about four years. All my classmates had their hobbies, their interests: music, fashion, dancing, books, boys, girls, etc.
I felt as something was missing. And until that something came back I wouldn’t be able to move on. It wasn’t a very fun time, needless to say. Father was old, Auntie was kind as usual and she taught me how to garden, how to weed, crafts that now seem useless living in and out of a concrete jungle, but on my last day of school I was finally happy. I felt that something was finally ending and I would find my way soon.
That night I decided I would go to the beach by myself and drink as Father did for the first time.
At 6:30 I was sitting on the sand, looking west and absorbing the last rays of sun on my skin.
The beach would become all yellow, then orange, purple, blue, black. The waves seemed to calm down for “lady night” to set in and the noise they would do pounding the sand during the day would diminish as if by magic. It was as if life slowed during those moments.
I gulped some scotch and spat it right back into the sand. Couldn’t understand why Father was so keen on it. Nevertheless I kept drinking, this time slowly. After a short while I felt my pupils heavy and I couldn’t focus on a single point. I lit a cigarette and started smoking which was not that unpleasant but it made me feel even drowsier. I let my back slide onto the sand and opened my eyes wide to count the first stars in the sky. The smoke would form shapes above my head and in my trance I could see people, animals, flowers and a myriad of images just above my eyes. Some images were pleasant, but others were terribly frightening. At some point I felt as if something was touching my face. It felt like hair. I woke up and stood up quickly.
As I stood up I heard footsteps behind me. I turned and a young woman was walking towards me. She was tall, tanned and looked vaguely familiar. She asked if she could sit with me, I agreed and she lit both our cigarettes.
“Nice beach here”, said the woman.
“Where are you from?” I asked.
“Here and there.”
“Holidays?”
“Kind of…”
We stood there for a while in silence until she asked what I was thinking about.
“Nothing special, I have nothing really to think about.”
“That’s impossible”, she said.
“I used to think the same, when I had a future.”
“What do you mean?”
“I am not sure what I mean. I guess when there is nothing you really want, your head empties. Your thoughts vanish.”
“It seems like you are just being lazy…or scared…”
“I am not either of those things. I just don’t know why I was put here on this island, with this family, with no goal for myself, no special skill or desire. I am still searching for some meaning.”
“That all sounds like cowardice to me…” she said while lighting another cigarette and looking at me from the corner of her eye.
“Why do you say that”, I replied. “You don’t even know me?...”
“Well you aren’t going anywhere sitting here, that’s for sure. The sea changes the shore when it’s rough, when it moves. There is no discovery, no development, no future in stillness. I am guessing you have never left this island, probably even this town!”
“Well, where should I go? My whole life is here!”
“Follow me!”, she said.
“Where?!”
“You’ll see.”
We walked under the moonlight with the sea at our left and the jungle at our right. She didn’t say a word. I followed her sheepishly trying to think of what to say. I gave up after a while, mesmerized by her long shiny hair. The more I looked at her, the more I felt I knew her and although there wasn’t a soul around us I didn’t feel a bit threatened or scared.
After a good twenty-minute walk I started to hear drums and I saw fire in the air. My heartbeat finally woke up to the situation, and I felt nervous. Maybe it was the alcohol or maybe it was the beauty of my surroundings, but I couldn’t remember how we had gotten to that place. I would be in trouble if I wanted to go back home by myself and only then I got scared. Of what, I wasn’t sure.
We met a group of people dancing around a bonfire. They were all half naked and most surely drunk or intoxicated with some form of drug.
“We're here”, she said. “Hi everybody! This is Moana.”
When I heard that I stared at her stunned. I was sure I haven’t told her my name.
“Lets drink!”, she said.
I recognized some faces from the group. Some of these people had gone to school with me but we had never talked before. Somebody bumped into me and passed the rum bottle. I drank and the girl looked at me with an approval look. She smiled. I smiled back. Somehow that reassured me. She had a beautiful smile.
We started dancing to the sound of the drums as if in trance or as if we were performing some ritual and everybody looked completely abstracted from reality.
At a certain point I noticed a young man looking at me. His eyes were green and he had a hypnotizing look. I felt immediately attracted to him and unconsciously I drove myself towards the place he was at.
We approached each other and he took my hand. We left the circle and walked for seconds until we were alone. He looked me in the eyes, put his hands around my neck and kissed me. I lost total control of myself and kissed him back as if there was no tomorrow. We ran further away and he jumped in the water. His glistening body tempted and frightened me at the same time, but I followed anyway. Soon we were both naked and I felt as if I would faint from so much pleasure. He took me to the shore, and we had sex. I remember hearing my cries of ecstasy towards the end and not recognizing my own voice. We stood there for a while, being splashed by the waves on our feet until the girl appeared and he was gone.
She looked at me and started laughing. I laughed too and soon we were both giggling and rolling on the sand covered in salt and alcohol.
I though I would die of bliss. Everything was too much for me. The new friend, the alcohol making my brain buzz, the deviant thoughts that ran through my head, letting myself go and trusting strangers was not normal behavior at all for me. But for the first time in many years, I felt alive.
We stretched out on the sand and stared at the sky and its last stars dotting the changing blue canvas.
After a while, I asked the girl:
“How did you know my name?”
When she didn’t answer I turned my head to look at her and discover she wasn’t there. I sat down and looked the other way. I found only a white hibiscus flower and a bracelet made of shells. On one of them I could distinguish a letter. “A”. I went back to the bonfire and there was nothing. No people, footsteps, even traces of a fire…nothing. I ran the beach searching for someone. I didn’t find her.
Until today I like to believe, Ahina had something to do with it. That was the best night of my life and it triggered everything that happened next.
As planed I left the island.
I left with the wind and traveled the world with no purpose, met many people and became a jewelery designer.
I live in another place now. It’s a huge city full of exciting people, magic places and plenty of nature around. It is still near the sea since I get my inspiration from it. From time to time, when I walk watching the sun setting on that blue, ever-changing surface, feeling the grains of sand on my feet, I still feel the subtle smell of the hibiscus flower and the wind on my face reminds me of them. Their jet-black hair.
Ahina and Mother. They walk behind me and fill my footsteps with dreams and hopes.
In the sand I find the tools to build my life. In the sea, I glimpse into who I was and who I want to be.
My name is Moana. It means Water in Hawaiian. As water, I run free through the crevices of my life.
Everything was white. Not bright, luminescent white, but the sort of sad, vast pallid color that echoes shadows only in our minds.
We walked with no sense of purpose, with the frozen landscape as our only companion. In that silent setting the tranquil whispering of the wind seemed louder than any futile chitchat over a coffee table. Scattered thoughts about recent events went quickly through my mind intertwined with the immense fear of not surviving this journey.
Pete was right. I should have never invested all my savings in this ridiculous search for the unknown…but what are you suppose to do when you reach a time in life when nothing seems to thrill you anymore. It’s different when you are young. Your desires are achievable with a minimum effort. A trip to Sri Lanka, skydiving, a pair of shoes, to get married, and so on…after a certain stage you run out of things to do, things to wish for, and the willingness to search for them vanishes progressively.
I can’t recall when things got to this point. I remember clearly when I was about five, the excitement of my first school day, the anxious goodbye to my mother and letting her hand go to run up the stairs of the front courtyard. Her eyes sparkled with happiness while witnessing my first big step into the grownup world and I could feel a speck of fear in her overall body language. Probably she realized I no longer belonged to her only.
In me, a turmoil of feelings and the adrenaline of going into unknown territory had settled. From then on, my whole life was spent trying to replicate that moment, an ephemeral piece of time that was to become my curse as I grew up. From that flash of a second I knew life would be full of opposite forces pulling me from one side to another without ever letting go. I had no idea where I belonged to. And the world was mine.
After that the melancholy of loosing something would always be followed by the thrill of gaining something bigger, more exciting and more rewarding, even if momentanously.
I understood that happiness was an impossible dream, and yet I was willing to pursuit it with all my strength, until today.
The walk was long and the icy wind was finally catching up with us. Without food and some ice as water the chances of finding shelter, or somebody that could help us were diminishing minute by minute. Charlotte, a Belgium research student, seemed to be loosing it as she started crying suddenly breaking the stillness of our quiet journey. We stopped for a while, tried to reassure her and when I finally opened my eyes and looked around I was overwhelmed by the arctic scene and its immensity. It was probably one of the most beautiful places I had ever seen and if it wasn’t for the fear of collapsing in this abandoned part of the world, I would have felt a greater peace than at any other time of my life. The horizon stretched all around me and the ice extended for miles until it blurred with the sky in a grayish blue color.
Besides us there was no sign of life. Everything that I took for granted in the “civilized” world seemed too far to even exist anymore and as we rested my body felt the incredible tiredness I was trying to suppress for more than eight hours.
Are you ok?, asked Junior with a horrified look on his face. Yes, I think so, I replied quickly. Any idea of where we are heading to?
If we walk against the sunset we might find the shore in a couple of hours, he answered unsure of himself.
Junior was our Brazilian guide, and unfortunately the guy that led us to this situation… “Trust me, it will be the experience of a lifetime!”, “ Noooo, no need for fancy equipment, we will just cross a couple of miles and camp in the middle of nowhere!”, “Its completely safe!”, crap…when your supplies are not enough and your navigation system cracks up “in the middle of nowhere”, I say you’re in trouble…
What if we don’t find the shore?, I asked.
Don’t be negative, it won’t lead us anywhere. Lets get going people!- he replied in his Portuguese accent.
So we kept going. My feet were sore and my nostrils were full of tiny bits of ice making it hard to breathe.
I remembered the warm lemon tea with honey that Pete used to make when I felt sick. He took care of me until the end. Even when I was a cold-hearted bitch he was always there for me. Not anymore. Not here.
We met when I was 32 and bored with men. He was five years younger and had this cheeky look that irritated me. It was winter and I dropped my gloves on the floor of the restaurant…sort of a cheesy start…but don’t all love stories start like that? The good ones at least.
Carefull!!- screamed Sebastian as Charlotte dropped her heavy body in front of me.- Shit…
Is she breathing?
Lift her up, we need to keep her warm!.
She won’t be able to continue, her legs....
We can’t stay here…we’ll all die by tonight!
I’ll stay with her, said Sebastian a bit unsure.
Are you positive? I asked, frightened.
Yeah, go ahead with Junior and find help. Please.
The idea of going on with Junior alone was more petrifying than giving up and staying with those two. I didn’t trust him. At start he made an effort to be nice and went on and on about how he felt bad about the situation, bla, bla, bla…my mind was far away. Pete. I really missed him.
That day in the restaurant when he picked up my red leather gloves and handled them to me, I wasn’t sure if he was real…he always had this pale aura around him, like a ghost. At times he could enter a room and I wouldn’t hear a thing...it was scary in the beginning but with time I became addicted to that silence. He could calm me down even when I was in one of my enraged moods. Not that he was a mute person, by the contrary, he could always keep an interesting conversation and I would never get bored, it was just the way he moved, the way he looked at people. There was something utterly deep about his eyes and I could always know exactly what he meant by a simple look.
You don’t find this kind of people often; most people can spend their entire lives without meeting someone like that…truth is most people are too busy to notice.
I didn’t fall in love right away, but it didn’t take long. It came fast and furious as a hurricane and I was lost for the world, for everybody else. The world was Pete, and Pete was mine. We built our little bubble and everything was good. It was like we had this shield around us and nobody could touch or hurt us. I was terribly proud and happy for a long time. Happy for obvious reasons and proud because I couldn’t believe I was to be one of the chosen ones. One of those who are lucky enough to be touched by the magic of true love. Until then I didn’t consider myself truly worthy of it. For a while I stopped searching for the things that gave sense to my life. There was no adventure, no trip, no new gadget or knowledge that could turn me on like him. For a while I was truly blessed.
At dusk the landscape seemed to warm up but only in our eyes. The snow was bathed with the orange sunset color and a blanket of light filled the place. We walked silent, behind us, the final rays of sunlight and ahead, the uncertainty of a destination. It soon became dark but we didn’t use our flashlights- an emergency could come up. I felt weaker and hungry with every step
In the dark, Junior started babbling about his sister, and how he regretted not spending time with her, I made an effort to stay sober and replied from time to time with some sort of indecipherable nonsense. My heartbeat felt dim and walking was becoming impossible when suddenly there was a huge roar coming from above.
At first I thought it was a thunderstorm. The sky turned white with light and when the darkness didn’t come back I was sure it was no common phenomena. Above us electric strings shifted randomly and the roar dissipated into the air like nothing had ever happened. The wind blew stronger and I felt my body move with its strength. For instants I lost sight of Junior just to find him lying dead on the snow seconds after. I shouted for what seemed to be an eternity but no sound was coming from my mouth. It was as the air had thickened, the cold was gone and this humid, heavy feeling took over me until I passed out.
When I finally came back to myself most of my clothes and shoes were gone. Junior had vanished and although I was alone and weak I didn’t feel scared. When the fog started to dissipate and the sound of waves reached my ears I thought I was going to make it. But what was expecting me in the other side of this hazy wall was nothing I could ever imagine. The waves in the immense sea were almost solid, as jelly moving slowly forward into the shore. The sea was of a blue I had never seen, deep and dark turning turquoise at moments, ever changing and sparkling in its magnitude. The shore was a clear boundary between ground and water, and although the waves moved slowly towards the sky, they would never surpass a certain area, like there was an invisible wall protecting me from this colossal phenomenon. At that moment I knew this wasn’t an ordinary place, in fact I was sure I had died. I felt no hunger, no cold and no fear. I could remember things from my past clearly. I even remembered the day I broke my toe under the chair when I was three years old… I felt very alive and alert, but most of all I felt alone. Like I had just passed a door into infinity and nobody was there waiting for me. The emptiness in the landscape reflected the emptiness in me and the untouchable, jelly blue sea reminded me of my life and the things I had lost forever.
The last time had I met him was on the old bridge in a sunny winter afternoon. I sat waiting for him on the cold stone benches and looked far into the river and the way water flowed through the stones. Once in a while a fish would jump. I always liked this place because you could sit and watch the city. People going to work, couples kissing, the water and its reflections, the projection of the old facades into the water like proud witnesses of an ancient time… I could stay there for hours. Sometimes I would take a book just to pretend I was doing something…the bridge was a sort of catwalk in which people passed, looked, stopped and acted their own dramas, comedies without ever even noticing they were being watched. Or maybe they did sometimes, and changed their attitudes in order to take part in the drama.
Peter was thinner than last time. We had broken up just after I got out from the hospital. I ended it, although I loved him still. I could see his spirit receding gradually since I got the clinical depression diagnosis. He tried to be there for me, but even though he made me feel better for a while, I would end up falling into the darkness of my intricate thoughts and the guilt of not being able to follow him, trust him like before and that was just unbearable. My dependency on sleeping pills got worse and for both our sakes I had to end it. I broke his heart. And mine in the process.
I brought your book. – he said.
Thanks…
How have you been recently?
Not bad…not good. Same…
Want to walk?
Sure.
We walked along the riverbank in the direction of the old warehouse district and the sunset was beautiful that day. The seagulls were busy flying low and their sounds filled me with a familiarity that relaxed my soul. For a while none of us said a word. He broke the silence.
I miss you.
I miss you as well.
Tell me you are not going on this silly trip of yours…
It’s settled…I think it will be good for me.
If you say so. Send me a postcard then.
I will.
Goodbye.
Walking around in this new world I felt my strength coming back to me. Somehow this place had a regenerating effect and although I walked along icy, white streams, climbed icebergs and explored diamond shaped caves I didn’t manage to feel anything. Good or bad.
I didn’t manage to find a single soul. There was only me and the solitude was more pronounced by the lack of sound than by the dry landscape.
Alone there I reflected upon my choices, my life, my ambitions. The root of everything I had accomplished in my life was also the reason of all my losses. I had managed to make all the right and wrong choices at the same time and there was only one thing to regret.
Suddenly the hissing sound of the wind returned, I felt weaker and nauseous. I opened my eyes and I saw him, looking at me.
His deep eyes penetrated mine and I knew he loved me. I also knew I had made a mistake. I felt his cold hand on my hand. My body felt like a block of ice. Everything was white. Not bright, luminescent white, but the sort of sad, vast pallid color that echoes shadows only in our minds.
Summer used to be a very active time during my childhood years. Playing on tree houses, swimming in the neighborhood's pools, catching small animals or picking flowers. It didn't change that much during teenage years. Going to the beach, tanning, going to parties, meeting new people.... It was always my favorite season. That sense of endless peace, the rush of furtive encounters under a starlight sky, the fresh fruit and the smell of coconut oil on the sand. I thought it was truly a blessed time of the year.
I am not sure if this is a unique feeling to me as an individual, but it seemed that summer was special to my circle of friends as well. The new boyfriend, the part time job, swimming under the stars and getting drunk on the shore with sangria and other "poisonous" drinks.
Recently, summer became the worst season ever...maybe because I moved into a country that has a terrible summer weather, maybe because I grew up, or maybe because my circle of friends grew up...is it only me or the thought of summer as a youthful season ends with adulthood?
These days summer represents sacrifices such as enduring a crowded train with people sweating profusely around me, enduring fowl smells everywhere, enduring the fact that there are no parties to go to or that there is no time to go to them...honestly I just feel like doing nothing most of the time. I feel as inertia is creeping over me and every little thing takes an increasingly big amount of effort from my part.
I wonder if it is really true that you age according to the seasons and my sweet summer season has gone...laziness is a terrible feeling but most of all I hate having lost the hope that summer brought to me. Sometimes I feel that hope is still here when some flowers bloom at night in this country. It is one of the little things that is still connected with that sense of freedom, restlessness and endless nights. The dream of a summer night.
"Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening another entity through subversion, obstruction, disruption, and/or destruction. One who engages in sabotage is a saboteur." (Wikipedia) Now, for the last decade or so, I have come to realize that me and most of my female friends are masters in sabotage techniques. Especially when it comes to our own lives and romantic affairs. Why is it, that every once in a while, we deliberately act in ways that put our happiness at risk and threaten the loss of our loved ones?
Reaching a certain level of maturity comes with the realization that there is no "Mr.Perfect" and that charming Princes can wake up one morning looking like either the "Bad Wolf "or the "Little Red Riding Hood". That realization is a perfectly good thing and being an adult means accepting this and letting it go...but it is just impossible for most of us isn't it?
Fairy Tales are just too ingrained in our minds and when we do find a man that contains the whole package, we start the game of finding the weaknesses that will provide us with reasons to deny the man and ourselves a stable relationship.
This begs the question...are we all just Drama Queens? Can't we live a relaxed life without silly fights and quarrels..? I am afraid not...if I traced a graph showing the discussions, fights and happy times of my own perfect relationship, I would probably find a pattern of scary behavior...it is my PMS, working long hours, the garbage that he didn't take out, or anything really unimportant that trickles a war of words...and then we are there...in the same situation again...the one we claim "not to like"...alone, sad, feeling sorry for ourselves and probably regretting the whole situation.
If this isn't sabotage, I wonder what is it...because it seems to me that it happens more than it should, and it seems also that it serves as a confirmation of our own feelings for the person at our side...this process of sabotaging our relationships is probably important to keep a certain balance and to find out if we really are with the right person, or with a person that really matters to us...sabotaging a date is fine, and it is definetely fine to sabotage a bad relationship...but aren't we taking ourselves too seriously in the process?
I can't stop but wondering if "Le Sabotage" won't turn against me someday and I will loose something really important.
