Categories for My story

Last night i was lying awake for a while. I was thinking of this terrible vacation i went on around forty years ago. I don’t know why i was thinking about this. I wrote about this earlier, in a post with the title Memories, in 2015.

After my exams, i went on a holiday with a good friend and her family. We were going with the train. We went to Italy, in the north part close to the Alps. Aosta was the town close to where we camped. The day we left, i called her on the telephone. She didn’t answer. I got in a panic and walked up to her house. As it turned out, i was calling the wrong number. Stupid me. The whole time we were hardly talking, until one evening we had a huge fight. I left the next day, or the day after. Afterwards she gave me the photos with me on it. I never saw her again.

This quote is describing what happened then with a coolness and distance which isn’t true. It is almost forty years ago, true. But it is still a painful memory, vivid, in bright colors. The day we left i used a wrong telephone number to try to call her. The silence between us lasted for around a week or so. The fight we had, me sitting in my tent, trying to get away from her as far as possible. The talk her father spoke to me while i was still there, saying i was a blemish on their holiday. When they got back home, i went over for a short time and got all the photographs with me on them. She said they would rather not have them.

The terrible shame i felt. That i couldn’t admit i had made a mistake when i called her. Using a wrong number.

I don’t know why i was thinking about this holiday last night. The talk her father had with me. Which i could only accept. I still felt so young. Not grown up. I don’t know why i was thinking about this holiday for the rest of the day. So long ago. Why waste my time on this.

But i don’t think i am wasting my time. I still need to go through this. I know i have grown since then. I really have. But there are still some things wrong in my life. Some things i need to accept. Like this memory. Nobody is perfect from the start of their lives. Nobody is raised with a good response to every situation they might encounter. You go through life meeting all kinds of different situations in which you need to deal with all the possible outcomes. Some good and some bad.

I do hope i have learned enough to continue with my life as it is today.

Las night i was lying awake once again. Like i did a few days ago. On and off, a couple of nights a week i lie awake. Eventually i will fall asleep. And then wake up again.

Last night i found myself thinking. Half of it i have forgotten now. But some things i do remember. I remember thinking about today. I knew the weather was going to be nice. I planned to go outside and sit in this nice little park behind the house i am staying in. Read a book. Which is exactly what i did. I already posted the photo i made yesterday while i was sitting in the exact same spot.

Last night i thought about myself, my life in this world, the choices i have made, the consequences i am still living with. I thought about what i said to my two sisters when they came to my old place. “I want to have a boyfriend.” Go to Tinder one sister said. I thought about the attractive house lord i stayed with last summer. Go to Tinder, you’ll have a boyfriend in no time he said.

That is not what i want to do. Hell no. It is not about sex. I want to live my own life, in this world. But yes, preferably with somebody else, who i can talk with, laugh with, cook for. Ordinary things. Extraordinary at the same time. And yes, sex. Of course. I long for it. Luckily i am capable to simply put that longing aside, live my life as good as i can. But yeah, the nights can be difficult.

My thoughts of last night do seem closer to me, clearer to me. But it is still hidden, hidden in the night, in the dark. Hidden in the darkness shot through with the moonshine.

Ooh man.

It is hard for me to write something which is interesting for somebody else to read, which makes somebody curious about my life, which gives an insight in how i live my life these days.

The past three days i have been aroused. My mind is focused on exactly that: kissing, touching, breathing, smiling, feeling ecstatic. It is all in my mind. I loose myself more and more, each time this feeling comes over me it is becoming more detailed. Nothing is going on in real life. Imagine.

I do think it is important. There is a movement in there. A growing independence, a growing distance. Each time i can let myself get into it more, stare at it, feel it washing all over me. And not let it take me away, not loose control. Apart from loosing a good night sleep. A minor detail.

It is confusing. Interesting, to me. This rapture i feel is a part of me, not somebody else. It is all me.

Salute! Enjoy your weekend 🙂

I am a slow grower. In my early years i grew sort of average. But in my twenties it was clearer. I had sex with someone when i was twenty-eight years old. A bit late. After that short time of only two months of having a boyfriend i decided that the next time i would like to be really in love. Not that i didn’t enjoy that first friendship, but it didn’t feel like i was in love at the time.

Then I didn’t understand the concept of being in love. I am not even sure if i completely understand it right now. When i was younger it was a mixture of physical attraction and a feeling of admiration and adoration. I am not sure i can actually describe what it felt like at that time to feel in love.

My years of solitude, described in Eight years of silence, are still so important to me. A stop to my work on lfs.nl, a stop to seeing my old friends, a massive World of Warcraft playing addiction. No love in that time for me.

At the end of these eight years i did fell in love. It was completely imaginary. All in my head. It was physical too. But, not real. A safe escape from the more ordinary, daily reality of being in love with somebody who loves you back. Something i until this day have not experienced with somebody else.

The past years i did fall in love with men i met, mostly from the garden. But those were short time experiences, lasting only a few months at the longest. Nice men, yes. But it didn’t stick to me. I learned every time though.

So here i am, 56 years old for only a couple of weeks more. So many things i have not experienced. Never been truly in love in a happy relationship. I have never had children. Something i had to deal with.

But over the past five years i did grow on. I felt it. Sometimes i fell back, sometimes i stumbled. But i did grow. This past year, in which i lived in rooms in other people’s houses, was a learning experience.

This will not stop. Until i die that is. Every single day each person can learn something new, big or small.

I do hope one day i will meet someone i will fall in love with and who will fall in love with me. But that is not the story of my life. The story of my life is me struggling and trying and failing against all hope. For the past fifty-six years.

For the past few weeks i have been thinking about my last post of the year. This one. I want to write about sense of wonder. I have known this concept since my teens. Especially in reviews of science fiction novels i came across this. But in this post i want to write about my personal experience of sense of wonder.

The past year has been a roller coaster for me. From the first of February i have been living with other people. Friends first, than strangers who i paid to live in a room in their house. Some were friendly, some were absent, some i didn’t like that much. But in each house i learned something. This past year has been a valuable school for me.

Life is asking you to approach what is happening to you with a curiosity and a sense of wonder rather than a “why me” attitude. The story doesn’t matter — only what insights and learnings you have gained about yourself and life.

Source: A Sense of Wonder

I am not sure how long this will last. I know my money is running out in about ten months or so. But i don’t worry about it too much. Sometimes it crosses my mind. But to me this is still a long period in which so many things can change.

I enjoy my walks. I enjoy being outside and looking up at the sky and seeing the plants and the trees. I enjoy watching the people walking around like they know what they are doing. I enjoy gardening. I enjoy being by myself. I enjoy being with other people. Sometimes, i must add 🙂

The world is full with the legacy of people who have lived their lives before us giving us advice over the lives worth living.

If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength.

Source: Rachel Carson and a Childhood Sense of Wonder

I am trying to get back to this sense of wonder, this childlike view on the world, a view i have lost over the years. I am loosing all the things i have built up over the years. Consciously. I realize my friends may worry about me occasionally, but i do not worry. I know i will make it. I believe in myself. I have complete trust in myself. It is difficult. Of course. Isn’t anything that makes life worth living difficult?

This is my last post of the year 2020. I am giving myself a two weeks holiday, to spend my time with Christmas and New Year alone by myself. I am not unhappy about that. I simply accept that.

I do hope you, dear reader, will have some pleasant moments in these dark times.

My best wishes to you.

Over the last few weeks this word was humming in my mind: outsider. That is what i feel like. Through my own actions. I sold my house, against the advice of my family and of my friends. I am living in rooms now and my money is getting less. All my decisions.

Why? Why am i doing this to myself? Why not trying to find a job, trying to make things work in this world, find a feeling of security in myself.

I have asked these questions before. I am still not sure of the answers. It does come done to that feeling i had in 2014, that hit with a sledgehammer telling me i need to work work work! Which is what i am doing today. Still responding. Still not letting go, still biting my teeth and trying to go through this, this moment of not knowing, feeling helpless and unsure of what to do next. Feeling like i am almost giving up. Almost.

I have driven myself outside of this Western European society i am living in, the Netherlands. I still walk through town, watching the people riding or walking by. I let the dogs sniff my hands if they want to. I smile when i see an opening in someone’s eyes. But i am an outsider.

There are many more people like me living outside of the main working body of this Dutch society. Homeless people, people without work, old people, young people with still so many possibilities in front of them.

But i have picked my path. I am sticking to it. I try to walk it with dignity, quiet, paying attention to what surrounds me. I still make mistakes. Sometimes i am not sure of what to do next. But this is my path, the way i walk steadily with conviction. Unsure, yes. But determined. Yes.