not quite there yet…

I look at the photos on the board in my bedroom and they seriously need to be changed!

Some will stay, they will stay forever, they have always belonged there… isn’t it funny how life keeps changing and changing you?!

There is one, that is my favourite, my parents walking down the street in the 60’s! My mum was defenitely younger than I am now… how can we be so different? Our lives are worlds apart! Did she immagine then that her life would be like it turned out to be? Did she expect it to be better or worse?

Will I someday be looking at my own photo from now and think that what I wanted right now turned out to be very different?! Someone told me the other day that it is good to know what you want in life, otherwise you wouldn’t get anything!

It is funny how this small sentence from an almost total stranger made so much sense to me! There was a time when I was going with the flow, and although my feelings were real, I wasn’t thinking of what I really wanted from life and that is exactly what I got… nothing! I am so glad now that it turned out the way it did that it is even hard to express…

Thinking that I am someone who has always taken risks actually comes into a new perspective now… and I guess that is what the last year has been teaching me… the fact that having had a bad outcome when taking a risk does not necessarily mean that I must stop doing it!

So I guess I have been playing it safe for almost two years now… I guess that I am looking way ahead because it took it too much day by day before… how balanced must one be??? Or better still, how balanced can one be???

It seems that I always need to over-analyze everything… and these situations keep on being thrown at me… spontaneity…

Can I do it again? Can I enjoy that same pleasure that was so responsible for turning my life upside down?! I guess I have to understand that it was not spontaneity that did it, if anything spontaneity took me closer to something that was very strong and real at the time…

Is it time to get a little bit more of my old self back?

sometimes you have to put an end to something that has never started… the hard part of doing this is that you will always be thinking how it would have been if it did start…

sometimes there are things that are not meant to start but that does not mean that they are not meant to end…

sometimes you just have to look inside yourself and be true to your feelings, and mostly to understand what you are about and what is reality and what is illusion…

sometimes it takes a whole year to say goodbye to something you have never acknowledged in the first place but it may also take a whole year for you to hear the words you wanted to hear a year ago when someone truly special crossed your path…

sometimes you can be happy and sad at the same time…

this is when you are truly living your own life… looking in and making it happen… new endings are usually new beginnings…

Marigolds are the white flowers so famous for their predictive power of ‘loves me, loves me not’… although, who made the rule that it shouldn’t start ‘does not love me, loves me’ and then it would always be the other way around wouldn’t it?

One could write a book as deep and long as the Bible when it comes to types of people and we always seem to start with ‘there are two types of people…’well actually, there aren’t only two types of people, maybe most categories have only two types, but how many categories are there?!

Anyway, I will link the marigolds with the types of people.

I have just found a very particular type of person (which hopefully is a unique case in the world!) who is the opposite of the marigold. The tradition with the marigold is that you pick it up and take off the petals one by one, each petal corresponds to a certain loved one loving you or not, now if the last petal is a yes, then you are lucky, if it is a no then your romance is doomed… I have met someone who is looking for the ‘unlucky’ petal and doing everything on what he thinks it’s his power to destroy the possibility of a lucky petal… the problem is that he has not realized that actually he has not built anything yet in order to be able to destroy it in the first place!!! Instead he is just being perceived as someone who is a compulsive/repulsive attention seeker (this is my classification), someone that wants attention when they don’t have it and that once they get even a ‘wee bit’ of it repulses it because it is no longer a need!

I have also learned that the say ‘it is meant to be’ makes a lot of sense. I am meant to be my parents child, my siblings sister and my nieces aunt. I am most probably meant to be my best friend’s best friend and friend with my friends… I believe in fate up to a certain degree… now I have crossed paths with the anti-marigold-compulsive/repulsive-attention-seeker who is also the person that is NOT meant to be, and I guess I have never thought of anyone that way, but once you have tried several approaches to that person and still it does not work, you are clearly a ‘not meant to be’… anything, not even accquaintaces for that also takes a certain degree of attention paid/given.

Never to late to meet a new type, ah?

tonight is difficult to put into words… but I will try my best!

I had a salad for dinner and quite a lot of beer… ended up at Notting Hill Arts Club which was not sounding very promising tonight and that’s what I wanted - a place to go in my skinny jeans and favorite-absolutely-flat trainers, just to have a relaxed drink with my best friend!

It ended up being one of the best nights so far! And I wasn’t in a very good mood… but that I will keep for the end.

Never in my life have I been in a place so relaxed and with such good music. We just couldn’t stop ourselves from dancing, even when our clothes were glued to our bodies. I take my hat off to the live singer who accompanied the DJ and thrashed the ‘rapper’, she was absolutely amazing, her voice, her performance and her over 3 hours endurance! Funk Royal not to be missed ever at the Notting Hill Arts Club!

As the night was dying and tiredness started to sink in here is the highlight of the evening - in comes a guy dressed in Borat’s swimmsuit!!! I am not joking or exaggerating! The dude was walking around the club with the ‘g-string’ swimmsuit as worn at Borat but in blue and the other significant difference was that while Sasha kept ‘everything’ in, he actually had his ‘bells’ hanging out! I cannot describe how astonishing and funny the whole situation was, particularly with him being so serious and relaxed and the staff taking pictures before having security kicking him out! I know I have been part of a scene that does not take place often (hopefully) and it was absolutely hilarious!

As for the mood I suppose I just have to realize pure reality! I need to come to terms with what I actually want and what I expect! I have tried to be this person who is made of steel and in many ways I know I am. I know that life goes on no matter what in the most pure sense of it! And it keeps me going without looking back. But it does not help with tomorrow. Today I had quite a strange day when I realised that, actually, it is not ok! I want more. I don’t want the words or the title, I don’t want to feel safe or in a stable situation, all I want is to be wanted and admired and I want to feel the same back!

So, you asked me a few days ago what would I write about you. All I told you was that you were my ‘male’ version, which is true and scary! But the difference is that I protect myself from others, until the day that I find someone who inspires me enough trust and breaks the cicle, it could have been you… you, on the other hand, are protecting yourself from yourself and that, I cannot change, no one can! The same way I got here you will have to get to this same place by yourself as I have been there and I know it is not easy even to acknowledge it… I wish I could be the one to take you out of that but I can’t, you don’t give me a chance and… I am defending myself from others at the moment and you’re the first on the list of this cathegory!

So maybe you will never get to know this, or maybe you will, I don’t know… anyway, this is what I am writing about you on the blog, just as you asked… but this is the last time I will ever do anything you ask, so this is my goodbye to you!!!

beautiful sunday afternoon! i know this week is going to be ‘hell’ at work and that for the next month until i finally get my ‘well deserved’ 2 weeks holiday in Thailand, life is going to be upside down with work and traveling and most probably a lot of emotional crisis taking place in the house… i can just see it coming!

so… nothing better than a magazine, a blanket, some juice, fruit and plenty of sweets and a friend in St. James Park!

it was truly relaxing… it did also remind me of a movie called ‘Scenes of a Sexual Nature’, although we were only checking out (as you do!) everyone around us and making all types of assumptions based on our extended experience on checking out people!

after three ours of stuffing ourselves with sweets and chocolates, a delicious Magnum white, and when the people around us had all been ‘labeled’ we decided to go to the coffee shop (as good portuguese we always start and end an event with coffee!).

as i seat down i had one of those moments (those that guys have every Friday and Saturday night when they had over 3 pints of beer) and just saw THE BOY!

no, he didn’t look like Olivier Martinez or Adrien Grenier (although if anyone knows which parks they usually go to i would really love to know) but there was just something about him that made me want to look at him… of course with my good luck, he wasn’t on his own, or with his dog (which would have been the perfect situation) he was with… his parents!

so, i feel 14 again and sneaking looks at a boy as i did when i went on holiday with my parents (of course they could see!!!) how embarrassing!!!

worst was the moment when he picked up a paper napkin and i promise, that for a few seconds, i actually had the hope that he was going to send me a note!

of course he wasn’t… he was blowing his nose!!!

so, i guess i have regressed in maturity and that i may have to be more selective with the movies i see as i think that romantic comedies maybe brainwashing me!

it’s a funny thing time! you just can’t control it! one day it’s on your side and the next it’s just your worst enemy… i think the later actualy happens more often.

as a child you can’t wait for time to fly, you want to grow up and be free and independent like you assume all adults are! as an adult you want it to go slowly, suddenly time really does fly and you look back and think of all the things you set as dreams and goals and you haven’t achieved yet! and everyday seems to go faster and you suddenly feel that you may have to choose between your dreams and goals because you won’t ‘have time’ to make it all happen!

in other circumstances where ‘time heals everything’ you think that it drags and here you do want it to go fast, you think that by the time you reach the ‘end of the highway’ you won’t be feeling like this any longer… most of the times you think that you will have forgotten all about it by then!

i always knew i would never and that i will never forget about it! i never forget anything, and in a way i am quite happy to be able to look back in life and remember all the moments, the big ones and the little details.  it’s part of who i am, it is my time, what i made of it.

sometimes time plays a little joke with you though… when you look back and can see what you didn’t then! it happened to me last week. suddenly i was back in one of the most defining moments of my life, i saw it and felt it step by step, and all i could think about was ‘how did i do it then?’, would i be able to do it again?  i was looking at myself getting on a long plane journey, that in any one’s mind would be the longest and hardest journey ever! i had plain conscience that it was the ‘end’ of the journey, and still… i still can’t understand how i managed so many hours on my own without shedding a tear or loosing it completely! i looked back at the whole situation last week and it just doesn’t seem real to me… how do i react to things?! most people would have been crying their eyes out on the next passenger’s shoulder!

but i waited… without realizing it i waited and my only tears lasted a few minutes and waited 16 hours until i reached my dad’s shoulder! and it’s just amazing how the person that have always made me so strong is also the one, and probably the only one, that can make me so weak, or better said, that i can be weak with!

most people would like a time travel machine, i wouldn’t! there is nothing to change in the past… and as much as sometimes it is unsettling to look back, to try to figure everything out, it’s a good past that brought me to this present! and as curious as i am, how boring would it be to know exactly where we would be tomorrow?!

I had another true ‘out of a movie’ moment tonight.

I sat at the dinner table with my dearest friends (a couple) and truly behaved like Hugh Grant on ‘Notting Hill’!

There I was telling them about my whole adventure and trying to get the ‘formula’ from them, trying to understand what is going on in someone else’s head (someone they never met!) when all they were trying to get to is that is my head and mostly my heart that needs some serious attention!!!

We came to the conclusion that during this whole ‘healing process’ I ended up building the ‘great wall of china’ around me! And that I am probably expecting for a tall-handsome-clever-mind reader-’spiderman’ to come and destroy it at my own pace and direction.

So… at the moment I need to decide what part of the wall is foundation and what part is defense against a non-existent war… and why am I creating a war in my mind…

Now I need to deal with the non-existent ‘enemy’… yet another learning process!!!

last week someone told me that he knew it was time to change when he realized that he couldn’t remember the last time he had looked at the sky…

today (better said tonight) i sat outside and looked at the sky for quite a while and the only thing that came to my mind was that i would not change ‘this sky’ for anything else in the world… i wouldn’t want to be anywhere else, i wouldn’t want life to have been any different than it was or is now!

so i guess that, at least under tonight’s sky, i am THERE! i may be ‘not quite there’ tomorrow or the day after or in the years to come but what really maters is that in the moment that i was THERE i knew i was…

This is another mars-vs-venus-kind-of-article! So if you don’t believe that men and women are different… firstly you are an idiot or maybe under 10 years old secondly just don’t read you won’t be interested!

I really can’t get around the fact that men just don’t understand women and vice-versa!

My best friend is a boy, my flatmates are boys and a lot of my very good friends are boys (yes, I am clever!) this is to explain that actually I do realize that girls can be rather difficult and given the choice I would much rather recruit guys (not just for their physical attributes, although please visit the new store Abercrombie & Fitch in London, veryyyyyy promising!!!) to work under me, guys are much easier and they usually get along with each others. Yes, there is an element of jealousy and bitchiness in almost every woman; the ones who deny it are the worst! (ok, ok! no! not your mother! this is a sensitive spot for guys…)

But as I was, very inarticulately, trying to get to is that basically, and from my own experience on listening to both sides is that both men and women actually say what they mean! But somehow, the other side always filters it as it is more convenient…

So here are two very simple and classic examples:

GIRLS, when a guy tells you that it is not serious and he is not looking for commitment, THIS IS WHAT HE MEANS! Even if he only says it once and calls the next day because he feels cold in bed again. He’s not telling you that you are simply a good shag because THEY ALL HAVE MOTHERS AND THIS IS THE MINIMUM RESPECT THAT THEY OWE TO EVERY WOMAN!

BOYS, if a girl tells you she’s not having sex before marriage… how can I put this??… SHE IS NOT HAVING SEX BEFORE MARRIAGE! Just find someone who will!

So let’s all just make the world a little bit of a better place and actually believe each others?!

The reason why I am writing all this, and I had thought about it many times before, is that if I ask someone if they would like a cookie, that is exactly what I mean, A COOKIE! Someone will learn the lesson…

Patricia Durao