‘Anyway, whatever you do, just remember not to forget what you did, where you have been or the people that touched your life, even that one that didn’t even look at you. The world is made OF people and FOR people.’ a friend e-mailed me this as a reply to my comment regarding the possibility or writing a book and not knowing where to start from… in the same way that there are different types of happiness so does sadness come in different flavours! some sadness is bitter and deep, it makes you feel physically ill, your head hurts, your body doesn’t respond.. when someone makes you feel like that it is not worth it! there’s plain sadness, when you are a little bit down, usually self-inflicted, it makes you feel empty, look inside yourself, it’s a good drive for introspection. finally, there’s sweet sadness, which in someway may be better than some types of happiness. sweet sadness doesn’t just cross your path, it comes with special circumstances and special people and it usually takes a good ‘intake’ of the former two to be appreciated!
all these definitions to get to the title while ‘going past’ the opening sentence. it is a fact that everyone that crosses our path is important in a way or another, and sometimes strangers or simple ‘passers-by’ make a bigger or better difference in our lives than people we have lived with and invested in for a long time. for me it took the one that i thought who was ‘the one’ (thankfully he was not!) to experience bitter sadness, plain sadness came as a result… but the funny and ironic part of all is that all it took was a stranger to bring on that sweet sad feeling that is so difficult and rare to find! as hard as it is to explain and probably to even comprehend. In the end the stranger becomes more important and permanent than ‘the one who thankfully is not the one’! and it is important to keep it that way, as odd as it may seem to everyone else - the stranger as a stranger and the feeling as everlasting sweet sadness…
yesterday i actually looked up and asked what was it that i did this year that was so bad?!
some people believe in karma, some believe in god and some believe in everything… i decided to take an easier approach and as ridiculous as it may sound, this is my approach and in the end, it means the same!
i believe someone is carrying my voodoo doll around!
somewhere, sometime this year a little rag doll of me must have been created by someone and since then… it’s been non-stop!
talking about people that are prone to depressions yesterday, I just thought: ‘Hell, I could have had a few this year…’
But what for really?
If I think about it everything has a balance and I can balance out every minus that happen this year with a plus: (in chronological order)
1) My sister-in-law went for a nose operation and as the first prize she got in coma. I was flying back to South Africa then and all I thought was that as soon I would land I would go back to Porto. I had such a strong feeling about her death… I was almost certain it was happening as I was crossing the continent.
Well, she obviously didn’t die, or I wouldn’t be writing about it so lightly! In fact she is absolutely fine. I think what stroke me the most in this story was that my brother was actually told to order her coffin! It probably stroke him quite hard as well. They changed, for better!
2) After spending a few weeks in Portugal preparing my wedding I went back to my ‘home’ and the place that was very close to be my ‘home country forever’ and my love. I think it was a matter of three weeks when I got a call in the afternoon that just told me to pack my bags and go back ‘home’. This was confusing for me… that was my home, that was the man I loved on the phone, the world collapsed around me…
I will never see this experience as something positive but, god! I am glad how it turned out in the end. I suppose in a very strange way i am thankful it happened, the thought that i was about to commit myself to the wrong person for the rest of my life and that I wouldn’t be enjoying life as i am now makes up for all the tears, the despair, the confusion and the heartbreak. It took a while, it still hangs over me. It does define me as a person and I cannot change that but I feel stronger, I feel better and most importantly I feel myself again!
3) My sister went on holiday to relax and came back on a plane with a collapsed lung!
It was also called a miracle the fact that she didn’t just collapse on the plane. Again… what was it? I don’t know. I think at this time I started to get paranoid, we were now in the middle of the year and I couldn’t really see what else could happen to us… It did bring my mom and sister closer and she’s quite a different person now. Maybe hectic stuff is due to happen to you when you are just hanging around in life, to make you wake up!
I am sitting here today and a year ago I could have sworn that this would be impossible. This year I definitely had the worst and best experiences in my whole life! I had my heart crushed and stomped on, my confidence and self-respect were disregarded by the person that meant the most to me. In a day I lost everything I had created in the past 3 years, my life, my dreams, my future were no longer mine, they had been planed in a different way and my opinion or knowledge was not part of the plan. This was the defining point… I could either go with it and let myself be ran down and lose control or… I had nothing so I would have to start from scratch!
Options are the best thing you can have! I prefer to have options than anything else in the world. When I look back I know this is what made me strong and go on with my life. I knew I could do, be and become whatever I wanted to! How many times in life do you have an opportunity like this? There is always something to lose, something at stake, some kind of loss. If the loss is irreparable and there is nothing else to lose this is when you are really free!
In the end I am more comfortable and happy with myself than I have been in years, I wake up everyday and think ‘This is me here!’, not someone’s wife or girlfriend or daughter-in-law. I am no longer living someone else’s life!
This year was really shit sometimes, I wanted to kick, I wanted to scream, cry or whatever fit of insanity you can imagine! But it was also amazing, I laughed louder than ever before, I got closer to my closest friends and made friends with strangers, I went to every single party I was invited to, went for picnics in the park, met a really nice short guy and had a terrible date with him, had my ex’s friend declaring his love and giving me the whole rundown of the future he had planned for us without my knowledge, met a hot stranger in Jazz Cafe who I never spoke to but I could have sworn that night that it could have been love, met a cute guy on a Sunday and got a huge cold sore on Monday… the list is endless…
Yesterday I got a call saying my flight to go back home for Christmas had been canceled! I will be waiting for the positive side but, in the meanwhile, PLEASE FIND MY VOODOO DOLL!