Looking sideways

Act I: A few months after things with red speed guy went up in flames, I started dating someone else, and as you all know I like my acronyms, I will call this someone PMM here. Semantically speaking, PMM is probably who I should refer to as my first boyfriend, but life goes beyond semantics - more on that later. PMM and I dated for about 6 months, and our relationship had many more relationshipy things than whatever it was that I had with red speedo guy (RSG from now on, to make my life easier). We had a nice relationship, and I liked being with him. But I never loved him. For starters, I was still madly in love with RSG, and I would still be in love with RSG for many years afterwards. He was the one I wanted, he was the one I craved, he was the one who made my heart beat. PMM was not RSG, but he liked me, treated me well, and maybe most importantly, wanted to be with me. PMM was a placeholder, someone who was there to fill an empty space left by someone else. And before you judge me, ...

Well, this is definitely not how I thought my weekend would be ending. In fact, I was so sure it would be a different outcome, that I had a text practically ready to post here on the blog, as a way of trying to get some kind of closure on something that had been causing me lots of anxiety. So much so that I had to walk away from it, at least for a while. In a way, my text was me trying to process that goodbye. And then life happened, as it always does. At first I was surprised and euphoric. Once again I was proven wrong, which meant that I was right to trust my gut, and I was right to resist doubting myself. But that happiness didn’t last - as it often doesn't, and I was back at being sad. Now that Monday has settled in, I don't know how I feel. Against all odds, against all I know about myself, not knowing how I feel feels strangely familiar. I am lost, my heart is lost, my brain is lost. The unexpected showed me how much I am lost. So I came back to my text, initially with th...

I think I am too old to understand ghosting. So much so, that I don’t even know if I am being ghosted. To be fair, I don’t know much of what’s happening right now, in this particular situation. Everything seemed to be normal, until everything stopped. For no obvious reason - at least not obvious to me. My gut feeling says that something changed, but it also says that this is not the end. The latter might be some wishful thinking, though. Maybe it is the end. Or maybe it hasn't even begun yet.  We need to consider entropy here: things that should happen will eventually happen, given time. In this situation, there wasn't any time for anything to happen, for good or for bad. We didn't have time to get to know each other properly. He didn't have time to get bored of me. And I didn't have time to fuck this up yet.*  Logically, it's probably a case of bad timing. Too much happening and too many complications, from both sides. This all seem very clear to my mind. But t...

I had to explain this to many people, many times, over and over again, so I thought it would be a good idea to write about it. Put it in words, so I can refer to this if I need to explain it to someone. It might sound impersonal, but maybe I can just send this to them when they ask me to talk about why I am acting the way I am. I wouldn't forgo a real conversation with them completely, but this could be a way to build a background. For them to see what is going on in my head before we even start to chat. Because this is about me, not them. And it's fairly consistent in my life, often regardless of who triggers it. I won't stick to the reasons for it, because I might need a whole encyclopaedia to explore everything I know about myself ther could be the used to explain these behaviours. And I'm pretty sure that what I know is just the tip of the iceberg. So no, I'm not gonna go into the whys. I will try to stick to the facts. The first fact is that I often feel like I...

Chapter three - Future: I’m far from perfect, and often unkind to myself. My self worth can be low, I usually feel like I’m a burden to others, I’m insecure, I obsess with bad stuff, and I find it really hard to be vulnerable. Besides, I’m a control freak, my pragmatism would scare most people, I plan stuff in advance and I can get easily overwhelmed with social situations. Meaning that I like my space, I'm not very spontaneous and I may take a while to reply. Despite all that, I have really high standards for the people I call my friends. And there’s a reason for that: I also have amazing qualities and, most importantly, I know my worth, and what I should expect from others, even if I don't get it from myself.  I’m supportive, caring and loyal. Once you become my friend, I’ll be there for you whenever you need me, and I’ll always be honest with you, even if that is not what you want to hear. I’ll never tell you something if I don’t really mean it, no matter how that makes me l...

Chapter two - Present: January is a strange month where I live. It’s a cold, dark, poor and uneventful period after the holidays, where people realise that their new year’s resolutions are unrealistic, they're desperate for payday and they just want to continue in auto mode until everything really starts kicking in. For me, there’s another layer: it’s my birthday month. And I haven’t enjoyed it for a long time. This year, for the first time since my late 20s, early 30s, things have been different... I used to love my birthdays back then. Recently, they just made me sad. I can't pinpoint why, but I can think of a few reasons, which are the topic for another day. January 2026 didn’t have any reason to be different. It started with my balls and nipples sore from three new piercings, my guts being unfriendly to basically anything I ate, my haemorrhoids choosing to make a comeback tour, and on top of all that, a week with that nasty cold everyone’s getting. Despite all that, it’s be...

Chapter one - Past: I’ve lost a bit of weight over the last months. I’ve been thinking a lot about how to write about it, an entirely new territory for me. I last embarked on a journey to lose weight 20+ years ago, for completely different reasons then. This time, for instance, I don’t feel about it like most people seem to. It’s an achievement for sure, and it’ll bring positive impacts to my life, but I don’t see it as something to be celebrated. Or deprecated. I don’t want to make a before/after where I’m better/ worse, and I definitely don’t want it to be about body shaming in any direction.  Things are changing because of choices I made, and choices have consequences. Over the summer my doctors told me that I’m prediabetic. Being overweight is not the only culprit here, there is a family history, but it has definitely contributed to it. Prediabetes was an addition to a mild NAFLD and sleep apnoea, both of which I had for a while, and probably the trigger for me to make some cha...

Anthology - Part VII: It was one of the strangest things that ever happened to me. A lot of strange things have been happening to me these days, but this may be the one that left the biggest mark. And it was so simple, so mundane. He just smiled at me, and this was it. It hit me. Like a punch. One I had no idea was coming my way. The best way to describe it, though, wouldn’t be using violence. I would probably compare it to that scene at the end of Ratatouille, where the food critic puts food in his mouth and, suddenly, he is transported back to his childhood. Me, I was transported back to my first kiss with the guy in the red speedos. For a few seconds that felt like hours, I was back at being 20 years old and feeling the shockwaves of that kiss. Just from a smile. It was such a strong feeling that I had to walk very quickly, all the way from the changing room on the lower ground floor, to the street outside my gym. Normally one needs to leave a crowded space because one gets overwhel...

Anthology - Part VI: I don’t remember arriving in Berlin. Or even disembarking at the now closed Tegel Airport. I remember the delicious cookies I got from the cabin crew of the quick KLM flight from Amsterdam, and I remember seeing snow at the tarmac in Schipol. But my first memory of Berlin is being in the 128 bus, on my way to the U6, with a heavy backpack on my back. All the excitement had, at that point, been replaced by tiredness after a 24h journey across the Atlantic. It wasn’t until a few days later that it dawned on me that the first day of the rest of my European life was finally here. I didn't know at the time that it would be the rest of my life, and that I would never end up using my return ticket scheduled for 6 months later. I also had no idea that I would meet someone right at the beginning, someone who would break my heart and my soul in a really catastrophic way. But most importantly, I had absolutely no clue that the love of my life was so close to me, waiting t...