Who does our lives belong to?

The year is 2020. 

The pandemic happened. 

Millions of people died - including some of your own family members. Your grandmother. Your aunt. Your oldest cousin's wife. Your friend's dads.

The year is 2020. It was so, so bad. Everyone just couldn't stop talking about please let 2020 just pass and welcome 2021 already. Everyone is exhausted and devastated. It was a very tough year for literally everyone. No one is spared. Except maybe Jeff Bezos? But surely he had his own nightmares too.

Something that you learned very well in 2020 is about how fragile life is. How it's probably just... a concept? How science probably can't explain how people retain their life and then lose it in a heartbeat. How your life is not yours.

Because when you're gone, it's not you who will miss it. It's other people you leave behind. Those who love you. Those whose lives you touched. Those who just didn't know how much of a presence your are in the world while you were still here.

You watched your friend went from that funny work wife to a person whose life leaves here slowly. She went from bright-eyed girl with bright future straight out of law school in Western Europe, to someone who can barely understand your words. This reminds you of your grandmother - who went from a healthy septuagenarian dropping wisdom every so often that you even wrote here about, to an octogenarian who had been laying in vegetative state for a couple of years before her life left her body. And you cried over it for two days.

This life - this entire experience, doesn't get better with age. It doesn't get easier as time goes by; you just learned that now, having spent 27 years on earth and 8 months of that mostly at home avoiding a highly contagious deadly virus. 

But that's the best - and worst - thing about time. It has complete disregard of whether or not you excel in things that happen in your life. It doesn't care how you are coping with it. It doesn't give a fuck how you are doing. It keeps going at its own pace. It moves on no matter how much you want it to stop. So no matter how you are doing in life... you are unlikely to stay in the same place forever. It will bring you somewhere. Maybe not geographically or physically - but you just won't be the same person forever. Because no matter how bad or how good you are in this life, time is bound to throw something at you. It's all completely up to you what to make of it - or what not to make of it.

I'm rambling here, I know. At the time you were writing this, you just watched your friend slowly disappearing inside the body of someone you know. It's the same body; a little different because it retains more water now, but it's the same. And yet you don't know her. You only know parts of who she is. 

She is disappearing, and you feel so helpless. You don't know what to do. Or how to help.

You want to cry, but there is really no very good reason to cry now. She is there. And you will be a horrible person to go ahead of time and think of the worst possible outcome.

You don't know why you're writing this, mostly out of worry and feeling guilty for think what you are thinking. You hope that when you read this again in the future, you remember how it feels to still care. To not lose any care in the world. To appreciate life again. To always, and forever, be grateful of the life you have.

True Love Will Find You (In The End)

Is it too early to start contemplating about 2020?

I feel like it's not, of course. But this is a short but somehow very significantly packed year in all of our lives, and the pandemic has affected every single one of us in one way or another, so I think maybe there are still things to happen in the 30+ days to come. Alas, let that not stop me from writing about my favorite topic of all time, and it is something that somehow I have avoided talking about since 2019: love.

I don't know if you know - well, if you're reading this then I suppose that we are very close in real life so you must have known - but in 2019 I had one of the most painful heartbreaks I've ever had in my life. Granted, I don't have that many heartbreaks in the first place, but it was... painful. Almost two years later, I still carry some of that pain right now, as I'm writing this.

Almost two years in, and somehow I can't get over the idea that he's probably one of my greatest loves, and I think all that pain - all of those long nights of not being able to sleep well or breathe easy or get my mind off him - it was mostly because I was afraid that I will not be able to find someone like him again. I will never love again. I've missed that one great love my life could ever get. That it was probably all the love I'll ever get.

And what's more - I never stopped missing him.

But then I have learned, through many tears and breathlessness and drunk nights out and talking about it with everyone who was willing to listen... that I don't have to stop missing him just because for some reason he can't be an active part of my life anymore. I can separate the desire to want to have him in my life, and the fact that I love the person, wherever he is; no matter how much he isn't in my orbit anymore. This way,  I can just accept the situation as it is and keep on missing them. I can still hold the love, without any of the side effects. 

This year, I lost someone who may or may not love me - but if I'm being brutally honest (and this is my page, so I'm allowed to be if not mandatory) even though I would never admit this... I guess to a certain extent, at least from my side, there was some love there too. Because when he walked away from my life while exercising the hot potato game, I too, was hurt. Did I know that I love him? Well, I did tell my best friend (and this is verbatim) that "...if I only have to think about him the the past month, yes I love him. But that means I'm completely ignoring the fact that the past 11 months, he had been horrible and I never even once think of love or even care about him. And if it didn't do it for me in 11 months, then it's just not gonna happen."

I stood by that still. But do I miss him now? ...yeah. Yeah, I do. And sucks as it is, this time is still better because at least I get to tell him that I actually miss him. And he knows it (although he might also think everybody loves him). The only thing getting in the way?

The person I actually love, and don't want to lose.

You know how there's all of these love stories where someone eventually meet someone they never thought they would ever end up with. Someone who doesn't look, or sound, anything like they ever thought this person would be. Someone who came from the most unexpected place, at the most unexpected time. 

And yet, somehow, fills out all of the expectations.

This person is it for me. He made me want to clean up my acts and change the way I live my life - bit by bit, but I do want to get better. Not for him, but because I just appreciate my life more. Knowing that there's someone who loves me for me - and I just don't wanna let this person down. So ultimately try to stop doing whatever I was doing; and start looking at that era as something utterly pathetic. As a result? I'm happier than I've ever been in a long time. Maybe since my last week in Chicago; which was well spent with the first person mentioned in this post.

I have to admit that the happiness is not the same. Not better. Not worse. Not more. Not less. Just different. That last week in Chicago I felt as if there's fireworks all around me. My mind was bursting with happiness and like my skin glowed in the way it never did before. This time, it just simply feels... comfortable. Like nothing too bad could ever happen, and I will never be rejected. Every day of my life just feels like... like a fluffy cushion. Like I'm walking amongst the clouds of clear bright sky.

The only catch? I've never physically met this person.

I know. It's weird. If it wasn't my own experienced I'd think it's dumb, but I have definitely changed my mind about this particular matter. I hope that it means I've grown? I don't know. I guess I'd just like to believe that change is usually good and that we will only grow outside of comfort zone - and this is definitely both of that: a change, and something that is outside of my comfort zone.