And now you have a decent coffee

In one night snow covered the whole street and the roofs of the houses were shining in a bright sparkling white, partly because of the snow and mostly because of the reflection of the light on it. Yesterday I had a severe lumbago for the fifth time this year. The discal hernia is not getting any day better. It is just a matter of time. All was calm outside. You put on the music of the movie “Fresa y chocolate”, an old Cuban movie, one of my favorites as well as the soundtrack. You came for dinner but I could not move. I did not try to put any explanation about the pain in my back. There would be no psychological explanation this time. I believe my back was just in a very bad shape since a year. Or maybe if I dare, I have been living not such an easygoing life this past year.

You brought a small coffee maker, a metallic one, enough for two persons. I always drink instant coffee and for you an Italian, it would be a bit a pain to share an instant coffee with me even if politely you had never once criticized the awful taste of it. You said that now I can have a decent coffee in the morning. You showed me how to prepare it. You showed me how to wash it. You insisted not to use any detergent and only water. You showed me how to use the washing machine as for years now I have always washed the dishes myself. You fixed the broken lamp in the kitchen. The one in the living room and in the hall. You cleaned my computer. You installed all the apps to make it safer. You showed me everything possible that would make my life easier with a computer. You cooked as I could not. You said that you are the boss so that you could put any ingredients you like in the recipe. You cooked and cleaned. You gave me a back massage. A strong one as if I was one of your free fighters. You used the Thai massage oil – the one you gave me after your trip in Phuket.

Outside it was still snowing and even more intense. You looked outside the window and told me that you could never forget our week together in the mountains three years ago. It was two months before you left the city for the first time. We went through the memories date by date, month by month. I was surprised you remember so much about us. I told you that once before you board for Thailand I was in Tokyo, in a hotel room, waiting for your call, I was taking a bath when you called. When the phone rang I jumped out of the bath without a towel, all soaked and talked to you, naked in the room, so scared to miss your call. Funny thing is that I pretended to be totally cool when you asked me: “How are you? What are you doing?” I answered: “Oh you know, nothing special”. Yesterday night I told you the truth. I made you laugh. You remember my birthday card, a card written with a “I f…king love you” with a huge red heart on it. I gave you the card two months before your birthday so that you could have it on the birthday while traveling. But you could not wait and opened it the day after. And you told me that when we met again. I was so ashamed. It was always easier to declare one’s love by message than face to face. I told you I was ashamed and should not be doing that. You answered: it was really alright, I love the card.

We went through our years together. Upon dinner. We have our ways to talk about things without being too sentimental and yet we are. Maybe it is just the way we look at each other and the words we use are very simple, very innocent. Would it be different if we talk to each other in your mother-tongue language. You said several times you loved being with me. You used the word “love” just like that. You said you loved my hands, my smile. Simple like that when you said “love”. In your mouth it sounds simple and pure.

I told you about the tattoo of your initial once I wanted to have. You said that luckily I did not do it as for now I would regret it and a lot. No, I don’t. Even now I would not regret it. I said. You looked at me. I could read in your gaze a bit of surprise but also a bit of sadness.  “Really?”. Yes, really. You should not doubt it. I did not say it out loud. It was intense enough.

I wish I could find another way to describe “us”. I wish I had a word stronger than the one I used to define “us” and our connection. This morning I woke up. My back was still in pain. I made my first coffee with your coffee pot. It tasted much better. I washed it only with water. The snow has stopped falling for a while. The street was white. The color of the sky too. All is calm. I have always loved the next morning after being with you. Life seems different. The whole perspective of life seems different after you. Life is full of dust and you are pure and completely out of our conventional system that seeing you always make me want to accomplish greater things. You are the only person who makes me believe that I can be different and better.

I looked at my cup of coffee, half empty and half warm. I miss your eyes. I miss the way you look at my heart which is full of our memories.

In one day we enter 2015. How can I define “us” ? It is everything. From my cup of coffee which reminds me of you to anything else that exists between us for more than three years now.

2015 could be anything. I believe. If things stay this way. The question of what we would become is so secondary. Because we can be anything. You give me this. Faith and perspective.

Just feel it right and it’s gonna be alright…

I started to watch The Mentalist again. The new season is back. Usually The Mentalist TV show is just something entertaining for me, I watch it after a long day of work, trying to relax, watching something not very complicated. I like the characters though the intrigues and stories are always quite simple. Yesterday was the first time that an episode touched me more particularly. Nothing fancy or really deep but I was in the mood for that after having posted a piece on the blog.

In the 7th season, for those who do not know, the two principal characters were finally together. Patrick Jane is IN LOVE. After seven years of watching this show, finally the male character is in love. It is very rare that on-screen two actors could have such a chemistry as Patrick Jane and Teresa Lisbon. More than a complicity, either they are very good actors or they are really in love off-screen. I was particularly touched by the way she looks at him. Strange, it gives me goosebumps each time.

In one episode, her ex (the one she left because of Jane) asked Jane something like: “Do you have a plan for her? I gave her a life, do you have something to offer her?”. Later on Jane told Lisbon about that, she asked him: “Yes, and do you have a plan for us” – He answered: “No. I think we know what feels right and I think that that should be our guide”

I have to admit, I have been girly and over-romantic ever since this sentence was pronounced. It seems simple but so right. Simply said and here I am, writing something about it.

I wish any woman could hear this from the man she loves.

What feels right should always be our guide.

The story of a suitcase

My flight arrived in the morning. Extremely tired as I could not sleep during the flight. I got out of the airport and took a cab home. It was another thick dark grey sky- day but I was glad to be home after three weeks away. The day before I arrived I wrote him a message, asking him to come and pick me up at the airport. He could not at the time I asked as he had to teach until 2pm that day. I live in a building with no elevator and my flat is on the second floor. My back and heels problems do not allow me to carry the big and heavy suitcase up to the apartment. I could have asked the taxi driver and tipped more but somehow I preferred asking him. He told me not to worry and to leave my luggage downstairs. He told me he would come later on in the afternoon and bring it up for me. He also suggested me to come to his workplace instead of going home from the airport. Anything is possible just to avoid me carrying the suitcase up to my flat; anything is possible just to avoid me walking up all the steps with the suitcase. For that he wrote mail after mail to make sure that I would not do it by myself and I would wait for him to come. I answered him to not worry and that the suitcase would wait for him in the hall of the building.

I arrived home, took a shower and especially tried hard to not fall asleep. I drank coffee then tea and refused to eat to avoid the process of digesting which could make me even more tired and sleepy. He would come by 3pm. I roughly calculated the time he got out of class and the time he would need to reach my apartment. At 1pm I put on my pajama and struggled against the fatigue. I looked at myself in the mirror. I looked unhealthy. My eyes were dark. My skin was pale. My hair was a mess. I was even more tired as the afternoon went by. At 2pm I was almost in a dream, walking around my living room. I practiced harpsichord for ten minutes but my fingers could hardly move. At 2.30 I received a text from him. He said he arrived soon. At 2.40pm I decided cowardly to lie on my bed for a few minutes. Things not to do as I fell asleep in less than one second. He rang the bell at 3pm. He could use the spare key I gave him once, but no, he rang. I woke up, more than stoned. I opened the door. He was there with my suitcase. He smiled and said that he woke me up he was sure. He said that the suitcase was light but of course not for me. I let him in. I realized that I was still on pajama. I remembered my face in the mirror one hour before. Pale skin, no makeup, hair in a mess, tiny eyes behind an old pair of eyeglasses, the one I only use at home, in front of no one. I said something like I am ugly and in pajama. He answered with a smile and a sound “tttssssss”. I added – And I am fat from all the food in the US. He said – nope you are not. I asked him to make us some tea and went directly to the living room and lied down on the sofa. I am so tired and lazy, could you make a green tea for us please. I was a great host, of course. I talked to him from the sofa. He asked me how was my trip and if I was happy to see my family over there. He came back with a pot of tea. He sat down next to me. I told him everything about my trip. When I checked my watch for the first time it was 6pm. He was there for three hours and we just talked non-stop. I felt like we were building together a new world or we were belonging to another world than the one we are living in now. I told him I had nothing to cook and I was not hungry either and all I wanted was to hit my bed. The whole time I was with him I was just myself and looked like nothing else than myself in the morning, when I get out of the shower. The whole time he looked at me in his unique way of looking at me. He said he would leave me so that I could go to bed. The whole time he talked to me in his unique way of talking to me. I told him the next time I would cook for him and I would be more awake and attentive to the conversation. I said that the next time we meet I would talk more. He laughed, kissed me on the forehead. I accepted the kiss. I stood there, barefoot, in my sloppy pajama, looking at him putting on his jacket and his backpack. He kissed me again on the forehead and left.

I went to bed right after that. The next morning I woke up and got a text from him: “Hope you got a sound sleep. I like that you feel comfortable around me in your pink pajama (with a smiley)”, to which I answered: “Very comfortable but still very ugly”, to which he in turn answered with a big-laugh smiley.

The past

Happiness is an art. I have been looking for happiness for the last 14 months. The more I look, the less I find. I have chosen a wrong path and since then living happily has become utopic.

I have been in couple for 14 months and as far as I can remember I was happier alone. It is a sad thing to say and probably I can hear people around me protesting. I believe I am happier alone. Either it is a true fact and I am just made to be alone or either I have chosen a wrong partner and my life in couple is not what I have expected.

Either way I am far from reaching happiness or the nirvana. I don’t know if I don’t want to be in couple or if I have been in a wrong relationship which led me to think that I am a person who could totally be alone, and die alone (which is even more than a truth).

The first wrong decision was to believe in the past. I was with my first boyfriend for 8 years when I was 16. I left him and we have lost contact for 20 years almost. Part of this was because he was angry at me for leaving him. Then for some reason we got back together after all these years. I have always believed that my past with him and my love for him were the most beautiful thing I had and leaving him was a biggest mistake of my life. When the opportunity showed up and pushed us back together I did not hesitate a second. It was 14 months ago. I have made space for this relationship and put all my soul into it.

The past was far past and the present is pain. The pain is so huge that I have lost all my faith, all my energy on the way to find happiness. I used to be joyful and I LOVE LIFE. I am now reduced to someone most of the time sad and weak. I hang on to the past to understand the difficulties of the present. I have nothing to hang on to except the past. The past of a story when I was 16. Destiny sucks and one thing I have learned from this story is that people do not change. Twenty years after the separation I have found the same person. The reasons that made me leave him twenty years ago could be the same for today. Nothing has changed except we are older and we are even more difficult and less tolerant.

I have been thinking for months about how one decision could jeopardize a whole life. I could walk away for the second time but for some reason I could not. Instead I stay and get sick and am sad. Someone once told me to forget the past, rectify the present so that my future can be better. I think I can’t just accept the second failure with the same person. There were too many mistakes in this decision. The thought of this person was my soulmate. The thought that this love story when we was teen-age was the best story. Now I can only blame myself for believing in the past. I have put aside the present at that moment to honor the past.

My sentimental life seems to go from one mistake to another. If happiness is the result of good decisions in your love life, then I would have to surrender, I would never be happy. Ever again.

When I was back at the gym last week and waiting for this dear friend, I realized that I had no choice to avoid pain. Could I make this past with “him” present again and put the present of the other past behind ? When I came home last week after seeing my dear friend at the gym I got back to my blog. 14 months were put on hold to live the other past. Worse thing in all of this is that I don’t even know what the word “soulmate” means. The one I believe was my soulmate only makes me suffer and the one who was unable to give me more than a conceptual love understands me more than anyone else.

Which past to choose ?

Fading away

He told me once the best cure for love is absence. In absence, everything fades away. I believe he is right. Completely right.

I have been in couple for one year and three months. Ups and downs. With faith. Losing faith. Most of the times in sadness more than in joy. I have been struggling. My couple was a sad challenge. But explaining why needs more than one piece of this blog.

During the whole year, my love for him seemed to fade away. Indeed. Or at least I thought so. I have been trying so hard in my couple that all sentiments or feelings I could have for him and which I could call “love” seemed very confused to me. All it counted for me was my couple and my partner. I maintained contacts with “him” but I rarely initiated them. He wrote to me almost everyday. But he knows that I am not free anymore.

I remember I announced to him my intention not to be single or not to wait for him during his times abroad. By e-mail. The last time we saw each other before my decision to be in couple (or to have a boyfriend) I did not tell him the truth. We just spent an evening like any other ones, having dinner together and talked and talked and talked with all the intensity possible that we could not notice anything else than our own energy. I could not find the courage to tell him that. In the night I wrote him a letter, telling him that I would stop the blog and thank him for the inspiration, that finally I had found someone to spend my life with and he could surely understand me as he could not offer me more. I insisted we stayed friends. He was supposed to stay in the country for six weeks before heading back to Asia. The day after my e-mail his mom told me he booked a flight for the next day and shortened the 6 weeks to one week time. I received his answer to my mail from Phuket, he said he understood me and we will always be friend and if I ever doubted about that, he would be very angry.

Since then, he always wrote to me first. Day by day.

I have put all of my energy and efforts and affection, everything I had into my new relationship. My love has faded away ? Or I just hid it somewhere or on hold ? I truly don’t know how to answer this question. My commitment to my couple was real and true and sincere.

One year and three months after I started the blog again. Asking myself where I stand with this love. He is back from his trip. He has not changed. He told me he had never written to anyone else that much and he was still very solitary. He told me he has always felt comfortable when being with me and what he loved most was our evenings together in the past. We never mentioned my couple again. Every night he sent me a song. Sometimes I thanked him. Sometimes not. It has nothing to do with my couple. Or yes, maybe it has everything to do with my couple. Am I happy ? I don’t know. Has my love for him died ? I don’t know. Truly I don’t know.

I am back and so is he…

I was away for a while.

I thought I had nothing more to say about love. Then I was wrong.

I saw him tonight. The same. The only one about whom I wrote and the reason why I started this blog two years ago.

I saw him tonight. We are friends now. But I have been missing him all these days, months. I have been missing him so badly that tonight I decided to write about him again. After one year and three months. I have not been talking about him for one year and three months. I have been thinking of him. And missing him for one year and three months.

I am back and so is he, in my life.

I see you

You know how much I like you?

When I am with other men, talking, laughing, socializing, I can see you in their eyes, in the curves of their eyebrows. I can see you looking at me and smiling to me. When they laugh, I see you.

When I walk down the street, I see an old man on a bench, eyes in the sky, I see you. I see a mother with a stroller, I see you. I see a kid with an ice cream, I see you. I see myself rubbing it to your face and licking the ice cream melting on your broken nose.

When people wish me luck to find a new man, I see you. I see myself answering them: “I had found this guy”.

You know how much I like you?

I like you as much as I can see you everywhere I go. My eyes have no other vision than you. And someday when you will disappear, I will fall into the dark of blindness. Till then, I let you be my vision, my universe, my infinity.

 

I am back and not cured from love

I am back and not cured from love.

Worse than ever. No, better than ever. Love is all over me. In my head. In my heart.

Things are simple but I did not always get it.

When a story is not finished, it is simply not finished. You don’t fight love. You cannot fight love. It’s something you just feel and have to accept.

You don’t “unlove” when you decide to “unlove”. There is no cure for love.

I wanted to close the blog. I wanted not to talk about love anymore. I wanted to let him go. There is nothing to do. I just can’t.

Everything will always be about him until it will naturally stops. How could I not understand it earlier? I spent the last two weeks, trying to be rational. The more I tried, the more I suffered. It was only when I surrendered my love that I was fine again.

He understood this before me. He could not let me go. We accepted our curse. Maybe one day. Maybe never. I look at the world. It is way better with him in my mind.

My only way to live and to find peace is to love him. Moving on is not a solution. Maybe one day this love will die. For now it is lively, it makes me breathe. I just have to accept it.

Ask her if she prefers…

Ask her if she prefers the warmth without him

Ask her if she prefers the sun without him

Ask her if she prefers summer 365 days a year without him

Ask her if she prefers the money, the luxury, diamonds and gold without him

The cold is warm with him

The rain is fun with him

The winter 365 days a year is easy to bear with him

With him life is simple

Appearances, superfluous values, materialistic dreams

Nothing counts, nothing matters

She shines with him in no diamonds and gold

With him she can live out of nothing

Like in the old days

When only love is enough

Like the French proverb:

“Living only out of love and fresh water”

Ask her if she prefers…

And the answer is already clear…

“I prefer nothing without him”

Sounds common

But that’s just it.

***

Painting “Lovers on the bench” of Marc Chagall (1911)

The connection

Beyond feelings, beyond love, she realizes that there is something even sweeter, more meaningful. It’s the connection, the link she has with people around her. People who are close to him first. People who are his loved ones. But there is more about that. It is not because of the love she feels for him. She does not come to them because of him.

The precious link like a thin invisible rope, yet strong, unique and magical which connects her to his loved ones. She has built with them a connection. Beyond him. And even if not with him. There is no such importance. His presence or absence in the connection is not to be considered. And even though she could not define the relationship she has with him. She can define the thing she has with his close ones. It’s all about connection. Far beyond him. Far beyond love. She appreciates seeing his loved ones and cares about them. Like her own family. She has adopted his loved ones. Not because of him. But she likes the way human beings care about each other, develop their relationship, strengthen the link, let grow the affection.

When she shares moments of her life with his family, she is glad to have met such nice persons. She has never thought that because they are his family. And this has nothing to do with love. And that is magical touch of the connection part. There is something extremely delicious in connecting. When she receives the good intentions from his family, she knows she is lucky.

Of course when she talks about him they see that her eyes are sparkling, her smile is more nervous. Of course that is unavoidable. She never wants to hide her feelings. Whoever in his family can perceive it, this is fine with her. She just never discusses with them about her relationship with him. Her love is kept in bashfulness, in decency. She would never discuss anything like that with them. Of course she is the one who could analyze him in details because she knows him by heart. And his loved ones can feel that. She could share a lot with them. Her childhood. Her memories. Her emotional injuries in the past. But not her love for him. This, they would have to guess or see only in her eyes. Or perceive it in her silence.

On both sides, what is delightful is the connection. The sharing, the sweet delicacy between adults, between human beings.

The link is marvelous and not fragile. The connection is easy. Far beyond love. Tenderness it is. With or without him in the equation. That is very important to her.