Happy New Year

I had one of the best end of the years in a very, very long time. It probably was the best, considering the level of general optimism radiated by me. I worked hard, felt that I was being (reasonably, but not sufficiently) rewarded for it, and finished the month full of energy and ideas and plans for the new year. I finally made my peace with Christmas, throwing a lavish party for 18 close friends and family with all the expected treats: an enormous turkey, lots of alcohol and chocolate, two whole days of eating and watching It's A Wonderful Life. And then, four of us went to the Scottish Highlands, as north as it could ever be, to hide away in a beautiful cottage and do nothing other than rest, read, drink, eat, take long walks and baths, and think about what's coming next.

Then, I realised I wasn't prepared for what was coming next.

On Saturday the 3rd I sat down to write New-Year resolution and To-Do lists, and felt sick inside. Suddenly, the carelessness and the freedom I was enjoying for the past 10 months did not feel right anymore. It seemed like 2008 had kicked me out of the house, like a loving but tough parent, and shut the door, leaving me alone in the street and the cold. It's like it was saying to me,"It's all nice and fun, darling, but this cannot go on. You better make some decisions to move forward, and you better do it now."

On Sunday the 4th, my mind was racing the entire drive home. Thirteen hours of restlessness. When we got home, still inside the car, I looked at my boyfriend and my new great friend, and said: "Guys, I don't know what's gonna happen to me this year". They burst out laughing. "Oh god, here we go again," they said, and I laughed with them. But inside, I was suffocating. I felt the shadows of my previous crisis creeping up, whispering in my ear: "Did you miss us, hun?"

I didn't. I don't. I thought I was the one who had shut the door, locked it and thrown the key away. No more sleepless nights, no more crying fits, no more distressed, desperate conversations in a bed that felt, at times, too big and empty. I got out of the car and thought to myself, "We'll deal with it tomorrow."

Then, Monday, Black Monday, arrived. My first conversation with the boyfriend ended outrageously in tears, followed by his arms around me saying we were gonna work something out. It felt like déja vu. I half-expect his hand pulling my hand, my whole diminutive body under his weight, whenever I finish a spectacle of self-pity. It was a pattern that repeated itself one, two, three times, and then at the remain of the day we worked something out. We set up a plan that will certainly soothe my mind for next months ahead, but it won't be enough to silence The Shadows that insist on throwing me off balance.

So we're gonna go away. Again.

Having it All

The other day I came across an article in a fashion magazine about that old feminine ideal of having it all. The myth that we, the fragile sex, can have a successful career, a family, a stable relationship and money while still managing to be pretty, sexy, fashionable and intelligent. Note that I say myth, and not concept, because that what it is, and will always be, if you, stressed out folks out there, haven't realised yet: being good at everything is nothing more, nothing less than pure utopia. It is a phony ideal of life. And more to the point, it's utterly unfair to women. Men don't go through this kind of dilemma - or at least, not the ones that I know. Most of the men around me (the non-gay ones) are either focused in 1)Make money, 2) Have sex, 3)Be recognized for whatever they do so they can have numbers 1 and 2, and 4)Have a good time after and while they're working at numbers 1,2 and 3, which includes drinking, drugs, bungee jumping, gambling in Vegas, or whatever takes their fancy. The ones with kids and relationships are either 1)Bored, 2)Too busy fucking around to care, 3)Thinking they're too hot to be having sex with just one bird, so they better get out of it ASAP. Some of them care about their looks or think about clothes, but never more than once a week, and even them it takes a right pickle for them to do anything about it (say, a girl that looks horrified at the sight of their naked beer gut, or a pair of torn jeans that exposes their disproportional god-given male qualities). So I suppose, with few exceptions, men in general don't go about fretting that they can't have it all, simply because they don't want to.

Now, in my case, the have-it-all ideal assumes an entirely new proportion. On top of wanting all of those things that make up the myth, each category is divided into several sub-categories, making the whole thing sound, well, decidedly AMBITIOUS.

I'll give an example (the most obvious of the other obvious ones): career. I don't want to have just ONE career, for many reasons, the strongest of them being that 1) I have way too many interests, 2) Which makes me want to be able to explore at least some of them at lenght and 3) Which also scares the monkeys out of me to be defined by any single one of them.

I'll translate: right at this moment I'd very much like to write a novel and short stories, colaborate with magazines, create an ethical fashion label, learn to knit, sew and draw properly, take street fashion pictures on a weekly basis, and become an assistant of someone with an established career in any of these creative areas. In my little deluded head, I believe I am perfectly able to do all of the above at the same time, so I've written a weekly schedule in which I dedicate a few hours everyday to each task/project, carefully designating special slots for exercising and socialising on a regular basis.

BUT - and there's always a but - on top of everything I also need to find time to run a small (tiny) business in which I buy, style, photograph, edit, update, promote and send vintage clothes to remote corners of the world, and all on my own.

The result: a frustrated, overly disquieted version of me at the end of every single day because OBVIOUSLY I cannot complete 25% of my meticulously drawn daily schedule.

It goes without saying that each and every aspect of my life suffers too. I skip daily runs and yoga sessions because I'm already late to finish whatever I'm working on, I neglect friends and boyfriend because I always think I could be carrying out a project instead of engaging in meaningless chit-chat, and when I am around other people I struggle to pay attention to what they say because my mind is racing with things I ought to be doing.

The relationship part, I don't even want to go there. My other half favourite choice of words is "What did I just say?", because he knows I'm endlessly pretending to listen to him. Not to mention (the shame!) my nightly predilection for books or another episode of Six Feet Under instead of sex.

God. My neck hurts.

So how on earth I'm gonna manage to have children and a house and (oh, I forgot), enough money to support this insane lifestyle, that's what I can't even think about thinking.

And there are still women out there who say we can have it all. I'd kill whoever invented that.

Elephant's Memory

Since we moved to the loft/studio/live-n-work unit, things have changed for the better ... and some for the worse. I can't remember if I said that before, but after 6 years living abroad, this is the first time we're on our own. Just me and him and the cats. I don't want to dare say it's anything other than wonderful, because that's all it has been for most of the time. But reality always warms her way into one's lives eventually, and now there are no flatmates to blame for the unfairness and arduousness of it all.

In one sentence: when shit hits the fan, sometimes I just feel like killing him.

Don't get me wrong, though. I am doing nothing more than venting here, because almost 8 years down the road, in terms of relationships I can honestly declare that I am NOT a quitter. Just because in times of trouble, when the clothes rail breaks for the second time and everything is gathering dust on the floor, when the Ikea cupboard is faulty once again and we have to return it, when the washing machine is leaking, the ceiling is leaking, the shower is leaking, the bloody London sky is leaking!, it doesn't mean I don't want to be with him anymore. Being - as in the act of existing - without him is a condition I have no intention of pursuing ever again. This is one of the major changes I've gone through since I started seeing him, because my original nature (if I can put it this way - surely one's nature changes along the way?) is one of a quitter. It's in my genes. For most of my teen and early adulthood years, when there was a remote possibility, a looming idea that things might go wrong, I would simply jump in and out like a frog who jumps inside a boiling pan. That is a classic example of immaturity: someone who just doesn't want to deal with too much pain. It's okay to get slightly injured, hurt and cry for a couple of days, but then life is too short to stir away in a pool of sorrow. Bring fresh blood in, please.

Then, I met him, and when it comes to loved ones, he is not a quitter. He just doesn't switch off his phone and disappear when jealousy and bitterness and anxiety broke all at once. He doesn't run off to someone else's arms, someone else's smell to forget the frustration. He was the first person to smile straight in the middle of a row and say "ok, I'm sorry, lets start all over again".
He says, "Even better, let's just forget everything", because he probably knows quitters like me have elephant's memory and tend to build a wall around themselves against eventual threats.
So gradually, brick by brick, he razed my wall down and taught me that love is about sticking together, specially in times of hardship.

On the other hand, I'm convinced that I was not the only one who learnt important lessons throughout our almost eight years together. I, with my extreme tendencies to over-analyse stuff, have always needed to talk things through, specially when I'm not putting them down as rantings in a journal or blog. Which means that whenever he would hold me by the collar to not run away, I would sit there and say "Okay then, let's NOT start all over again. I wanna talk about it." The quintessencial, old-school "Let's discuss our relationship." I like to believe he is not like the stereotypical man who avoids this kind of situation. Instead, he simply was, years ago, unfamiliar with this habit. It certainly became a habit. And because of these two rules (1. do not avoid problems, and 2. confront and talk them through), established steadily by both, we managed to change our "original natures" - at least, a little.

Today, when life comes crashing in with bills to be paid, cats to feed, cleaning to be done, things to get fixed, projects to be carried out, all accompanied by the ghosts of failure and frustration, we try to stick together.

And talk it through.

So long

Lá se vai mais uma. Eu definitivamente não sirvo pra ter amizades femininas. Elas nunca duram muito tempo.