Categories for My story

This afternoon i walked to the garden, the Vredestuin. I did not intent to work. I wanted to empty the small compost bin we use in our house. I picked mint leaves for the tea. I did do the dishes, outside, together with Davine. It was great weather, sunny, around 20 degrees Celsius. Springtime greens are abundant. Th trees, shrubs, the cows parsley along the Essenburgsingel, lovely!

I’m thinking, while i walked to the garden. I know i am still living of the money i got for my house. Another year or so. I am reading books, watching youtube videos with many different people talking about the world, about corona, about medicine, about economics. It is difficult to find my own way in this maze of opinions. I don’t know how i will respond if someone asks me questions. I hope i can stay with my own thoughts, stay calm, stay level headed. There are so many things i don’t agree with. Economics, business processes first of all. That is not my world.

I do know i want to fight. Let my thoughts be heard. Ask questions. Fight for this world. So beautiful, so alive. So rare in this universe. The way we treat our world is terrible. The way we treat our fellow humans is terrible.

I’m not the first person to say we need to fight. Of course not. I am simply joining. I hope i’m not too late.

I do recognize the event of a calling within my life. A calling is amongst other things a strong inner impulse toward a particular course of action especially when accompanied by conviction of divine influence [source]. I do not consider myself to be religious, but i do value religion. In our current society religion is mostly seen as being old-fashioned, something of a bygone era. I see the many wrong things in religion, but there also many good things within it.

This calling i described has happened a couple of times in my life, the last time in 2014. Since then i let my life go through my hands. I stopped trying to earn a living, i sold my house. I still live on the money i made then.

I am still my own worst enemy. It is very hard for me to believe in this so-called calling. I still don’t. I still refuse. I just want to be myself, live my life in this world, the life meant for me. That i do believe. Our world believes in accidents, coincidences. Nothing is meant to be. I am not sure that is the truth. Even though half of me tries to convince myself that is the case, that is how this world operates. Just chance, nothing of meaning in it.

I do hope you will enjoy the weekend. Make a walk. Smile at people around you. Pat a dog you pass. Or a cat.

Salute!

Today, i was sitting on my bed, thinking about life, watching some youtube videos. Yesterday i subscribed to De Balie, this afternoon i watched their latest video, Arnon Grunberg Ontmoet Bart Nauta en Alicja Gescinska (Dutch only), halfway. I will watch the rest this evening. It did get me thinking about my life, what i want, i guess. I used to say i want to find somebody to love. That is still with me deep down in the depths. But it is not the only thing i want. I do enjoy talking with people. I like to go to the market on Saturday and talk with people there over all different sorts of things.

I thought about the time i was starting up lfs.nl once again, in October 2014. The post called My Boyfriend is honest.

So here I am. 50 years old. I can spend my life alone, quite happy. Or i can try to find my boyfriend. Finally.

My first response is of course to get me one, now! When I sit in the train, when I walk outside, I am watching all the people passing by. Quite desperate really. I’ve become aware that I’m in a dangerous period. I can start to feel strength in me, the power to draw people towards me. To get me what I want. Dangerous. Yes.

How would i like my boyfriend to be? Gentle, kind, sweet. My age, or a little older. My height, or a little taller. And yes, handsome 🙂 I got a list of names, but there are many more people whose name I don’t know. And of course I got dreams. I just move another picture of a face on my boyfriend. I give him another name. Easy. It’s hard to make me not do that. Might even be impossible.

So, here I am. Not entirely sure which way is the best. The only way forward I see is to follow my own heart. Which is a bit scary, truth be told. But i think i can handle myself. Finally.

I like this piece. I am following my own heart. It is scary. I wrote this almost seven years ago. A lot has happened in those years. Now i do not live in my old house anymore. I do feel sad over that. But it is alright.

I do hope i will get myself out of this hole. By writing and drawing, publishing it on this website. I realize i got myself into this hole, and i can only get myself out of it with my own work. And, truthfully, a bit soon preferably.

🙂

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.