Farewell to You

So the time has come to say good bye to the year 2009. It was a good year to me – it was actually just the way I wanted it to be: stable event-wise, but rich in new emotions and feelings. I will miss so many things about this year: songs that made me feel sad, warm Florida air during my vacation, people that walked away from me into a new life. I will miss being 29 – that last chance to be in my twenties and refer to myself as a “girl”. I am learning to live with a new concept of being a woman: I am supposed to be wiser, more mature and more feminine. I am supposed to be stronger too – but I don’t know about that. Sometimes I feel like new experiences only make me more vulnerable and prompt me to shut people out and hide deeper inside. I learned to appreciate solitude and silence.

I lived with dignity and determination through the biggest challenge of the year. I didn’t let the emotions take over – and the outcome was exactly right, I came out totally innocent from the story in which I could have been almost a criminal. Even if I hurt someone it was totally unintentional and I made everything in my power not to let things go too far. I had my closure and I am hoping to be able to let it go completely in a new year. This story is over. Even though my mind and my heart keep going back to it, it’s totally over. Period. No roll-over. No continuation. Farewell to you.

It’s Real

All people are pretending. They are pretending to be someone else: someone better, someone worse, or simply someone totally different. They pretend they like you to please you. Just in case they will need you in the future even though the probability is too small. They pretend they want to spend time with you just because that’s the only option they currently have, unless they prefer loneliness which they don’t. So living in the world where everyone is wearing masks pushes you to have a set of masks too. You become a master of fake smiles, a small talk pro; you learn to adjust, conform, and disengage.

But then someone comes alone who is sincere about their feelings. Someone who looks right through you and sees things inside that even you are unaware of. And moreover – he likes what he sees, he likes YOU! Without any efforts from your side… That’s when it begins to overpower you with a range of mixed emotions. You feel grateful for this kind of recognition, for attention and admiration. You feel vulnerable because someone was able to penetrate through your disguise and see the things you normally don’t allow to be seen. You feel flattered, you feel beautiful.

But then comes the biggest yet the most dangerous feeling – the feeling of power. One gaze – and he is your slave forever. He likes you not because he knows you – he feels you, which makes him fatally attached. He breaks through the walls to get inside your world just to find he is unable to get out. He is a bird trapped in a cage – it’s up to you whether to have mercy and let him go or to keep him trapped forever. Can you be strong enough to part with this kind of power?

It's Okey to Love

The other day I was watching the movie “Idiot” based on the immortal book by Dostoevsky. It swamped me with so many thoughts and ideas about the complexity of the human nature and all the things hidden inside of us waiting for something to trigger their liberation.

I was thinking about the biggest conflict of interests you can imagine: between “I want” and “I can’t”. Most of us live our lives the way we should, few dare to rebel and follow their heart – to face self-destruction or to get hurt, switch gears and go back to living in a mode of commonly accepted normalcy. Adolescence is probably the only time when we risk things, risk experimenting through which we could find and define ourselves.

So you get married which in return for comfort and stability brings so many limitations to your life. There are people who were born for marriage, there are people who should stay away by all means. But some of us are stuck in the middle – we get married because we are better off this way, but then we feel trapped, marriage consoles and suffocates us all at once. This intense contradiction can exhaust anyone, it fills you with guilt and almost self-hatred.

The hardest part is to admit to yourself – no one else - that there are still things that you want. You cannot change overnight just because you got married. So you still “crave” things that you did when you were single. You still want to be liked. To be loved. To be desired. You are still capable of having a crush on someone else, even though you love your spouse. And when someone has a crush on you, it still gives you butterflies in your stomach. You cannot cut off all those things that you are feeling. So what you do is you start fighting, ignoring or hiding them from yourself. But they find a way to haunt you: sometimes through your dreams, sometimes through a love movie that resonates so painfully in your heart. And one day you just reach the point when you are done hiding: you want to cut your heart open and see what’s inside. You want to admit and accept things that scared the hell out of you before. You are a Woman. You love LOVE. You are free.

To Be or Not to Be

If you make a mistake in life – somehow the situation repeats itself after a while, just when you thought it’s all forgotten. As if you are forced to relive it again but do it right this time. And you still feel tempted to do it wrong but this time you know about the consequences…

So I came up with two possible explanations. One is that the situation will keep repeating itself until you react properly and break the cycle. But the problem is that sometimes the right decision is unknown, it pretty much needs to be guessed – which puts us under the risk of making a few mistakes before we finally come to the right answer.

The second theory is that we cannot really change ourselves – we are what we are. But learning to accept ourselves is something that we need to do. When it finally happens, we are in control of the situation, we turn off the emotions and the right decision is right there on the surface. Pure logic. We will then be able to disengage ourselves from the situation, everything seems to be the same but we no longer care.

I don’t know what to believe. I want to do the right thing. But I don’t want to kill my emotions. I want to feel what I feel today even knowing that tomorrow will inevitably bring the pain. So next time the situation repeats itself, I am clueless where the victory will go to in the logic-vs.-heart battle.

Time to Let Go

When you have to let go of something that you want to hold on to, that you want to be yours… When you have to do the only possible RIGHT thing… Your mind gives you a hundred reasons why to do so. But your heart gives your just one reason not to: that’s NOT what I want it says. There are social norms we have to go by, there are moral duties; you proved the case to yourself over and over, you promised to stick with the decision. Then why are you such an emotional wreck right now?

We cannot help feeling attached sometimes and what’s wrong with that? It doesn’t hurt anyone but you, right? The problem is you don’t know where it stops. The further you go, the worse the ending is going to be. From little scratch it goes to an open bleeding wound that nothing seems to heal.

We are done with the matter; we put it in a heavy chest, lock it and throw away the key for good. But one unexpected word – and somehow you are holding the key again, ready to revive the buried secret.

I made my list of reasons. I memorized it. I rehearsed every word I should or shouldn’t say. I followed the protocol. I let go. But it keeps coming back and I don’t know if I am strong enough to keep letting it go so many more times.