Starbucks tumbler, lentil soup and smashed Berlin

I dropped my Starbucks tumbler on the kitchen floor the first Monday morning after the New Year weekend. It was a plastic one that I'd bought in Berlin almost a year ago. 

My relation with material objects is very simple: I do not get attached to items- with exceptions of two books, my personal cure for melancholy. They have medical purpose, you will agree. 

I learned to share from the beginning, thanks to the fact that I grew up during the war. Whether it was food, clothes or toys, I had to share it and not only with my older sister, but with all the children in the shelter. 

So, when I grew up I continued to share everything with people. Except my boyfriends and my dogs. Maybe I was too possessive, who knows?

After marrying, building a home and then getting a divorce (when eventually life turned out to be heavier than we had thought), I left him and everything behind: my time, my passion, my dreams and also my nerves. But I gained it back again, by believing that new beginnings are inevitable, and that your most important possessions are within you. In the meantime I rebuild it all over again, but this time only and exclusively for my daughter and I. 

It is strange how much strength you discover yourself to have in the moment when you pass invisible border  between bad and worst. Overnight, from a divorced and single mother, I became a single mother of a child with autism spectrum disorder. 

It was devastating to understand that I am completely powerless to change this fact. After two days of crying, I decided: I will fight back! So I packed a bag and I went to Vienna and afterwards to Berlin to seek an ally in my personal war. 

It was my first time in Berlin and it was a love at  first sight. 

After walking alone down the beautiful streets and after visiting the Jewish museum I went to have a soup with an old friend. We sit there in some girly restaurant, full of handcrafts and flowers, ordering a chicken soup. After a while there a soup is delivered, but it is not the chicken one; it is lentil soup. 

So I stare at the fucking soup and my friend is staring at me, not understanding what is the problem. Do I want him to say to the waitress that she made a mistake with my order?

No, I say it is fine, I will eat lentil soup, because as much as we try to hide at least for a moment, we cannot escape from ourselves. There are constant reminders of who you are and what you are made of. 

So, I eat lentil soup for the first time after more than 20 years. I am eating it and it eats me. I eat what was uneatable during the war, when the only thing I could not stand even to look at was lentil.  

And here I am in beautiful Berlin, reminded of the only thing I have already spent years trying to forget, and understanding that no matter where you are, you will always have your personal baggage, and most likely it will be the one which shaped your character during your most fragile years. 

Within few days I went back to Sarajevo. I brought back some postcards and bad taste in my mouth. My daughter and I continue to fight back against the circumstances which threaten to shape her character. Luckily for her, she has a mother who is considered by many to be a lunatic, and who will raise awareness, change her lifestyle, change the world if possible, but who will not allow society, war or autism to make her daughter a hostage of her own life. 

We are far away from Berlin and without an ally. Yes, I smashed Berlin on my kitchen floor. I already have too much baggage anyway.

Surreal 2015 and Big Bang of the Brain

Surreal 2015 started with the big bang of our brains. We trust we are in the future, but I think none of us were ready to fully embrace the chaos we found ourselves in; it is like being static but simultaneously moving ahead led by unknown force.

I had a lot of breakdowns during the year, mostly emotional ones. They were deep, dark and intimate, almost unspeakable. I felt like my body is cracking, while my soul is swelling under the pressure of  melancholy and sorrow. There is a homemade bomb within me; I build it with my previous lives. As everyone else, I have a tendency to die once in a while. Also, I have a very close relationship with death; she is like an old friend I did not hear from in a while, but whom lives deep down in my memories and in my heart.  Death is very present in our lives even if we are not aware of it or ready to accept it. Sometimes I feel it is the only constant part of life, only reality which exist, like if everything else what surround us is an illusion. Some learned lessons of living. Some human trying to stop the time and to put the frame on elusive appearance of life. 

Robert Frost once said: “In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.”  I agree, it goes on and takes all my tears, fears, love and happy moments within, but what my life is made of? What is the essence of it? 

It is a palette of shades, of beautiful people, of following feelings, of produced  situations, of tenderness, of understandings, of dreams and dreamers, of believes and believers, of imagination and illusions; it is castle in the sand which I am constantly rebuilding despite all odds for rebellion. I heard once that good fortune follows the brave ones. 

So, the circle is closed. I am leaving my emotional baggage from 2015 on the side walk of December. I am barefoot while I am crossing the invisible line of fate in the future. I believe things happens, shit happens, love happens. I believe you happen to me for a reason. Your task in my life is to teach me how to be patient and how to love tenderly in silence from distance. 

Maybe you are my miracle, maybe just lost fate. Maybe nothing, maybe everything of that, who knows? I am ready to accept to be loved and to be hurt, but I am not ready not to try. 

I do not want you to change, or to grow up. I do not want you to sacrifice anything for me; all I want is you to remain being a person I got used to. The person whom I miss the scent of while sleeping alone in your bed, the warmth when you sit next to me but not holding my hand, the tenderness of calm voice when you text me. The person whom is still on the boarder of crossing from boyhood to manhood.  

So, I am embracing the chaos. I am accepting my inevitable fate, my darkness, my breakdowns, my vices and my fears, but I am trying to understand yours too. You grow up in different system of values. System, in which I will remain alien. This idea scares me more than a fact that I am older than you, more broken and more damaged in terms of life experience. 

I am grateful for unconditional love I received from you, but forgive me for doubting that humans are able for anything unconditional. I am meeting certain difficulties while I am trying to understand what and how I feel for you. All I know is that contemplation will not provide me an answer. The answer is in silence we share, in your unselfish care for me, in my deep tenderness for you, in need to be close to you physically without touching you, but wanting it subconsciously or consciously at the end. 

So, forgive me that I do not believe I am able to give you unconditional love. Seen through my eyes you are a beautiful man. And due to my human nature, I seek for beauty in order to fight against the senseless moments of routine. So, death learned me all important lessons about life and among them is: when the moment comes for you to leave this life, the only thing you are allowed to take with you are your memories. So, I am trying to collect beautiful moments with the beautiful people.  

Beauty can not be defined, but it can be measured by her depth; I feel you deeply.  

You are the only surreal thing from 2015 that I want to keep; you are my illusion.