A heart in pieces

Culture shock (never fall in love with a British guy)

If we are going to establish a true and honest rapport here, I shall start telling you what I think about this text itself: be patient and count on your imagination, because my words won’t be good enough. They could never be, and it is not a privilege I own myself, words will never be enough, in any text or any language.

But, we are all used to imperfection, aren’t we? Since you acknowledge yourself as a human being, you must have had to face it someday, somehow.

I guess that starting this text with a confession, or an apology, if you like, is not only because I want to sound trustworthy or something, but mainly, to deal with my own fears.

Writing a text inevitably leads you to face the fact that you may get lost in the middle of the way. Getting lost, depending on who you are, may hurt badly.

It happens something similar when you travel abroad, and then it comes to our topic. At first you are so immersed in enthusiasm and excitement that you don’t realize the real dangers of the journey : traveling within yourself. Or, maybe you do. That’s why it is so exciting after all.

This trip can take you to such intense feelings and experiences that you may not find your way back (to yourself) again.

In a way, it can be an allegory of life itself, and not being able to come back is nothing but the reality we are all made of. And it is great. But, in an extent, we all have to find how to return, if it is not to your ‘old you’, you have to find (or make) a new one.

The feeling of traveling through oneself may not be as self-assuring at first though. There are sometimes very distant and dark locations ahead, when you really understand that you may get stuck there forever.

Fortunately, being human has its own benefits and life finds some ways to help us out, if we are lucky enough.

Ironically, dark places are powerful to bring us some light about aspects we can’t see with our eyes wide open, such as ‘why don’t we do some things we don’t do?’ I really have no idea if it makes any sense to you, but it showed me who I was, or, who I had always thought I was.

I realized that the amount of things I hadn’t been doing was massive. And worse, the explanations and excuses I came up with were as bizarre as the list itself.

That’s when you somehow have to face the music: if you don’t do anything about missing yourself that badly, you will continue missing others around you even more badly. And I would say that, worse than this, what used to be lacking before, becomes such a deep crater from where you can’t get rescued. And even though I have always been aware of my own tendencies to be a drama queen, I suddenly realized that now I had real reasons to think so.

Hurting, losing, lacking and being aware that you are not good enough may destroy you, but it can heal you too, depending on which track you decide to take.

And believe me, as cliché as it may sound, we will never stop hurting, losing, lacking something or feeling we are not good enough. Because we simply aren’t. Because nobody is.

But we can earnestly find out that we can be good sometimes and that is enough. Simply because those are the moments which will put you face to face to others who really matter to you and to whom you do too. That is all about life, a life that is worth living.

By now , I haven’t figured  something out just yet : does it make a difference if some people give you the cold shoulder, pretend they hadn’t noticed how important a better contact could have been or behave like they are always good enough for themselves to a point that they don’t need you (in any way) ? What I tend to think is that they may all be thinking about their dark places as well and why they don’t do the things they don’t do either.

I also think that, even if they are not really thinking about it, they are thinking about it anyway, because, actually, in this respect, none of us have that much choice, do we? At least if we acknowledge ourselves as human beings, and if we are lucky enough.

But  I prefer to avoid this thought, because it reminds me of my own arrogance.

Finally, the real excitement of traveling abroad (or writing a text) is that you have to forget about controlling some things, but being quite skillful to control others, in a way that you are ready to lose yourself a great deal, but never to that point when you can’t come back for good.

And, to this, lucky doesn’t help, pal, you have to be courageous enough.