Unconventional family, Tolstoy's opening line and Disneyland

Thanks to my choice of living I have had a chance to understand and to experience the Tolstoy's opening line of Ana Karenina: All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Sometimes we have a family days, my ex-husband, our daughter and I. We spent all week or more together like a regular family. It is fun, like a going to Disneyland or seeing the latest blockbuster in the cinema. It feels like a template of living. Even though the comprehension of  life provides us with the understanding that this is a short-term happiness, we still allow ourselves to (ab)use these moments. It is human belief that things can be improved; that love stories can be saved; that dreams can find their hazardous way to become reality. Yes, all of it is more than possible; all of it happens all the time, but what about the things which have the tendency to  follow our moments of happiness like a dark shadows? 

Those things are happening simultaneously. Life is a game of light and darkness. 

​What about the situations in life when we find ourselves as part of collateral damage? What about our lost loves? Nevertheless, what about our broken or forgotten dreams? 

​Sorrow is equally as precious as love; hurting makes room  for improvement of empathy and solitude can sometimes be the greatest company. 

​Beautiful people you used to know are not necessary the ones you share your present with, but not being part of your life does not make them less beautiful. Lost loves are like butterflies- tragedy is crucial part of their existence. ​So, we have a choice, even when it does not seem so. We can accept or refuse; we can settle with ordinary or we can seek someting unique. We can do whatever we feel like doing or whatever we ever wanted. 

But, do we completely understand the difference between our dreams and our fears? 

You can choose your starting point as empathy or religion, but it is crucial to make a humble observation of your transience and human vulnerability. Is our fate the path we follow, or do we create the path for ourselves? It is a personal inner debate, and it is essential for understanding the distinction between our longings and our  aims. 

I believe in God, I trust in life and I love people. 

When I was younger I thought I knew exactly what I wanted from life, but along the way I realized I had just a sketch designed by my imagination within my mind. Life is the canvas (even this metaphor sounds cheap). We hope we can draw with our desires, but eventually we do it with our actions. We are mapping our lives by choosing our next step, all the while dancing under the moonlight or crying in the dark. I love to compare a life with the sea; I see both as a movement of the greatest force. 

As years passed I learned to truly embrace my imperfect life and the people who are or who were part of it; I accepted all brokenness of humans relations. In the meantime I started to live in the present moment , instead of daydreaming of future I was longing for. Yes, I do have quality time with my unconventional family, but I also  have time for my highly appreciated  much sought after creative solitude. In the personal choice of independent  living social labeling is useless. The traditional norms are needless- only beliefs and human ethics are really relevant.  The aim is to make a collection of all meaningful moments we have had a chance to  pass through.  At the end of our journey in our memory only the joyful moments and sparks of happiness will remain.   

Thanks to my choice of living I have had a chance to understand and to experience the Tolstoy's opening line of Ana Karenina: All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

​I guess, we are a happily unhappy family; we have a family days without going to Disneyland. ​

"What shall I bestow upon you when I do not own anything but my words?"

Today I spent all afternoon with my parents, my sister and her daughters. Yes, I am very attached to my family and I cherish close relations with them. We share our time, our good and bad moments, our actuality and our past  But, today a strange moment happen and I was not prepared for it. A moment of travelling through the time; going a decade in reverse. My mom brought out a sheet of paper after the lunch. It was a song I wrote to her 10 years ago for her birthday and she wanted to share it with my 10 years old niece. 

The song was written by hand on a blank sheet of paper from notebook. 

I do not remember writing  process, neither poem's existence. I do not remember my mother reaction when I gave her a peace of my soul written down with my left handed, difficult for reading writing style. I do not recall particularly that birthday of hers, except the fact that it was November 18th, 2005. I was in a high school back then. As any teenager, I was more focused on my inner world rather then on my reality. To be honest, in that time, books were my reality; most likely depression as well, even though I never saw it to be an issue when I was living my episodes or periods. 

She asked me to read it to my niece, because no one can read my handwriting; I always wrote exclusively for myself and I never made a copies of my work. I remember the moment when 4 professors tried to read my final essay at the high school, because they founded my handwriting to be very complex. Eventually, they understood that  the context I wrote was better then expected, so I was awarded with the higher recognition - to be naturally gifted future writer. The same belief followed me through the collage, but my highly developed self-criticism put a shadow on my possibly bright future of becoming a writer; I would call it a curse rather than a natural gift, but regardless how is marked, living with it and despite it is the only way which remains. 

But when I took this sheet of paper, when I saw my handwriting, when I looked at personal note addressed to my mother, I simply started to cry without any control. I read it for myself, choking in my spontaneous tears, trying to read it fast, so I can take some air; trying to get down from the roller-coaster of my constantly present melancholy, with the same intensity even after a decade, trying to tame this overwhelming sorrow within me. 

So, I found some strength left to read it out loud to my niece, whom hugged me when she spot the tears in my eyes. So, I am reading and my hands are shaking, my soul is breaking and my heart is growing in the same moment. It is ode to my mother and I do not want to sound pretentious, but with the decade of distance, I can say it is well written; deeply melancholic and honest poem. 

And I am reading it so everyone can hear me. My mother cries too. Why do you think I end up to be so emotional? It is a personal heritage from her and my full of love childhood. 

The one verse is repeating in a good manner and it sounds something like "What shall I bestow upon you when I do not own anything but my words?"

While reading it, I start to understand that a lot of things happen within 10 years, but nothing what matters has ever changed. 

Catwoman will save a day (with the puppy look in her eyes)

On the beginning of my twenties I used to date an older guys. They made me feel special; they made me feel spoiled. Simply, I felt as a young girl should feel: like a princess. From them I  learned how to be grateful to my youth, how to enjoy the time and the present moment, further on to dream big, to explore my inner world, to understand how to love my body, the other person, their fears and worlds around us. They loved me, they admire me, they broke me and eventually  helped me to grow up. I still love those few individuals and their madness as I love my favorite writers. 

The thing I love about them the most is that they never changed; they remain to be a lunatics, socially unexceptionable, emotionally unreachable,  now in their forties, but still caring around the boy's dreams and boy's heart. They loved life and all manifests of it. I was always smart enough to understand that the only person whom you should try to save from the inner demons is yourself. Even then, success is not guarantied. The funny thing is that I was always ready, despite common sense,  as every young believer is, to trade my dreams and my heart for salvation of their brokenness.  Luckily or unfortunately, depends of your perception, I was saved by my own demons and my broke illusions at the end.

But that is the new chapter, the broken ones. I loved those men. I think I still do. Those are the most intense and most hopeless emotional relationships; you love his imperfections, but for some reason, which none of evolved understands, you try to fix it; you try to help him.  He might asks for the help, but to tell you the truth, he does not really want it; he simply enjoys your good will to sacrifice for him. But, once when you are distanced and you can see clearly what this all was about, you understand how stupid you were, but you do not regret! How fake it  was? Fake enough to believe in ti!  But, you are young, you are now aware of your innocent blindness and so it shall be forgiven!

As time was passing I spotted the young ones. The beautiful boys with big dreams, but shy individuals. Insecure ones. The ones with a lot of potential to grow up into men every girl or woman dreams of, but the boys with the lack of courage. 

So, what I did? I tried to encourage them. To provoke them to think big, to be brave, to become aware how beautiful they are (I believe everyone is, but I find some people more beautiful then others; the one with the vision I admire the most) and how to keep up with this (re)mark in their lives. 

Everyone needs encouragement; someone gets it for free from local lunatics, and the others pay for it with their smashed self-esteem, with their tears, and most important with their lost time.

I am 29 today. I do not need encouragement anymore, but I am truly enjoying to raise awareness of people how beautiful they are, how big they can grow, how far their imagination can take them, if they would only try to believe. 

To believe in my words, in the look of a stranger, in the impossible, in their hopes in third person's dreams, in their own strength. If  they would only allowed themselves to escape this judgmental environment, they would discover that there are a parallel universes in their everyday's lives! Your dreams are reality there; there can become here if you deeply believe in magic.

The truth is: there are people whom trust in you more that you trust in yourself. 

Some of my already forgotten loves made their way out of this madness called socially acceptable behavior, adult expectations, real life and the other bullshit. They saved their souls and shared their beauty with those whom are cable to recognize it in their art or simply in their humanity. 

There was a lot of, more or less, significant men in my life, even though I cannot recall some of their names. There were also the ones I used to dream about years after, but regardless the fact that  I was always surrounded with more men, rather then women during my twenties, the women are those whom truly made an impact in my life, and whom inspired me the most. 

I do not know a lot of woman, but those l know I had admired from the beginning.

Those women are storms; they are hurricanes of alien energies, waterfalls of fresh inspirations, and nevertheless, they are goddess and warriors for their believes and dreams; they are braver than any men I ever cross the path with. Each of them is a Catwoman and owns the avenue of  her broken dreams, lost loves and past lives. All of them are proud, but, in the same time, humble. All of those women own the universe within.

Women I admire are cats with the puppy look in their eyes, but with the dragon's fire in their hearts.  

Catwoman will save a day.  Trust me. 

Lovers are strangers

From the moment I discovered love, I never stopped loving since. Sometimes I loved for a years, sometimes for months, but in the meantime, I learned how to love for days or hours. Something strange is happening to love in general; if you ask me, I would say that broken people are happening all around the globe. 

It seems that everyone is trying to love less instead of loving more. If they are engage in emotional relationship, people prefer to receive more tenderness, care, affection and attention, rather than to give it in return for no cause. I find it to be very odd and disturbing.

I was loved and I loved back even more, through all my life, but I never thought of it as my weakness, just the opposite, it was my strength from the beginning.  

When on earth became important whom will call first and what shall be said? Love is mute, but it speaks all languages. 

Disposed and offered feelings by someone are there to be cherished and appreciated, not to be analyzed and abused in personal war with your own demons. Simply, I do not understand when love affairs happen to be transformed into war zones. It is inevitable: to kill or to be killed. 

It is clear to me that lovers fight; they fight to improve their relationship; they do it to refresh their sexual life; they fight because they care or despite that, because they are not strong enough to change their bad habits instantly; change requires time. It seeks for support, understanding and patience of the significant other. In order to evolve together, we have to accept that we have to proceed with certain changing process of ourselves. It is hard to achieve that advance; it is even harder to do it alone. 

If we do not succeed in improvement of ourselves as a better, smarter, more wise kind of person, we often intend to blame our partner, third person if needed, the situation, the circumstances and everything we could think off, but we will never accept our defeat. We will never admit we are the one whom failed. 

We will look for "better"! Why people always think they can "do better"? What better means in terms of love? It means that you will become that person who loves more.  

It is so sad to live in ignorance. It is deeply disappointing to know people spend their lives in fear of unknown; they even love in fear; in fear of being hurt. Love does not hurt, dear people, expectations does.    

After all fights with yourself and with others in name of love, only one acknowledgment remains: lovers are strangers. I found it to be beautifully inspiring for ours future love affairs, regardless for how long the love will last. 

More poetry and babies is needed

I am reading my friend's poetry for the first time. It is older that our friendship and it was hidden for almost 15 years. He is not planing to publish it or anything similar, simply he felt that it is right moment to share it with me, after all this years. It was appropriate gift for my upcoming birthday! Trust packed into the  verses. 

Poetry does not belong to anyone, neither to author; poetry has it's own life. I love to compare making art/creative process with giving a birth to a baby; I went through both.

Once when get's out of you art becomes everyone's asylum. You are delivery person, participating in divine process of creation. The purpose is giving.

If you are using certain art form to make a living or simply to survive, than keep in mind that once when creative process is finished, your art does not belong to you anymore. Once when gets exposed to a human eye, ear or mind every person will see it differently; your art will become a mirror for someone's cognition of world, life or feeling. Be aware that you are doing it because you feel strong urge, stronger than sexual one, to shape your demons together with everything you once learned or experienced, imagined or dreamed of into the piece. 

Once everything gets out, you are baptized. 

Being a mother is the most important role for me and my biggest happiness, even though I understand completely that  in my life, except my hard work, nothing else is in my control. Life is erratic. 

If you give a thought to a fact that you are a parent and that you are guardian of someone's life as long as you live, you will understand that they are living in your time, but that you are not living in theirs. Their time is just about to become, and most likely it will happen in the meantime, while you are getting to tired and/or to old. Besides of being your children, they are also humans with their own will, their future dreams, fears and hopes; with their lives which exclusively belongs to them, not to their parents or their future children. 

They are beautiful artworks you witness existing; you can put your trust in them, your love and your prayers. You can guide them and be grateful and honored to play this role in screenplay called life. You should do your best to be a parent, a shelter, a listener, a friend, an angel guardian, but you should never ask for their gratitude at the end.  

You chose to be their parent, they did not had a chance to chose to be your children. 

That does not mean they are not thankful, it only means you need to let them be, and you need to be proud of them for whom they are. Nevertheless, allow to your children and to poetry to remind you what it is crucial in life; allow yourself to trust in unconditional love again.  

I admire to children and I adore poetry. I admire and adore the pureness of heart. So, I beg you do not try to be a role model to your children or to use them as extension of your youth in order for you to accomplish your failed ambitions. 

 I beg you not to interpret the poetry based on  author's biography, even if you personally know the author, or if the author is yourself. 

You say you love me, but you do not, my love.

You say you love me, but you do not, my love. 

Love cannot be squeezed into one word or defined using only language, simply  because it does not belong to language. Twist your head around, It's all around you,  All is full of love. I will not try to define it, I am not a fool. 

I love words as much as I love love, but I never believed that for me or for anyone else is possible to frame complexity of love into one word, regardless the language we use. Off course, I have tendencies to describe feelings, to get a little bit closer to understanding of my inner world. We are humans and we intent to be in control, but beauty of love is in the fact that it is our of the reach. It is divine feeling and completely intuitive. If you know why you love someone, you probably do not love that person. 

Do not say you love me, because you do not. We are not lovers, neither friends, even we strongly feel both. You will protect me, you said. You will help me and be there for me! - I have heard from you many times, while we were drinking and smoking on the balcony feeling confusion of our heartbeats and coldness of winter's nights.  But you are not able to keep up with your words. You are exiled from your dreams and feelings. Today I am your friend, but tonight you will love me again and be jealous while I am kissing the other man. I will sleep in your bed again, alone, while you will spend the night on the couch. We will have puzzling fight and feel bad tomorrow, texting to each other: "I am sorry!", but thinking: I do not want to lose you. 

Then, you will start to date a girl and insist on my presence there. We are friends, right? Then you will kiss her, but stare at me. And I will drink more and laugh harder, trying to make it easier and less awkward for all of us.  I do not want to witness your deeply superficial relations, but I am doing it for some sick reason and I pretend not to care. I do it because I understand what you do not. I understand why you think you love me. 

You need me to be the person seen with my eyes. You love the version of yourself created in our most intimate moments in the crowed places during the long, confusing nights. That is what it is all about; we manage to create our own universe in presence of others. We establish addiction of other ones presence, but we did not talk about it. 

If you ask me we should never talk about feelings; we should only feel and follow it. We should let it inspire us! Allowed it to take us where we cannot go all by ourselves. We should follow our intuition and let ourselves go. 

Anyhow, tomorrow we will only be friends. 

 You do not love me, my dear, you only understand that feels right to be near me.

 If you would love me, you would not have to say it, but I would still be able to read it. So, you are drunk again, right? You love me, but it is too emotional, than too sexual and eventually too complicated. Love is never complicated, believe me. Love moves galaxies and transforms weaknesses into the strength.

It is a strong force, stronger than the sea.  

You say you love me, and I believe you. 

I knew it before I heard the words. I believe you, because I feel you. But again, if you think you love me enough, I will prove you wrong. Because, babe, love makes you brave, it makes you foolish, but it does not makes you being friends with someone. 

Thank you for your love, but if you are only ready to offer me learned version of love, than I recommend you to learn how to love someone else. 

Love, hera

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.