Ruminating

By 5:55am my eyes were blinking wide open. Fixated on the bedroom ceiling observing the short distance from wall to wall. Bouncing back and forth, my thoughts began to ruminate. I could enjoy the warm comfort of my bed and stay in a state between half awake and half asleep, never achieving either one, or I could get up, start my day slow, knowing I had captured more time.

Is capture the right word? I didn’t buy myself more time in my day, time exists whether or not I choose to do anything with it. Perhaps, I choose not to let time slip away. As wasting time is a concept I don’t agree with entirely, that is a whole other conversation for another day.

I’ve spent a vast part of my life and time wondering about the what ifs. Particularly around this same time window between choosing to do or choosing to sleep. Procrastination and ADHD play a big part in it. But this past year I was tired of running myself into a wall pondering what I could have done with all my time.

What like it’s hard?

As I contemplated (still in bed) I thought about the image I had adorned my laptop screen saver with. For the past month my computer screen background has been a screenshot of the famous scene in Legally Blonde where Reese Witherspoon’s character Elle Woods famously says to her ex-boyfriend “ What like it’s hard” in response to his question and much doubt “You got into Harvard Law?”.

This phrase has been my mantra for the past couple of months within my personal and professional life. I tend to forget most days that I can in fact choose to live my life and act on my dreams with the bold audacity of a white man.

Because as much as Legally Blonde might be fiction, reality, time and time again proves that as long as you embrace your dreams with delusion, can we dare to actually achieve them. If our dreams were easy to obtain they would not be called dreams, they would be just another to-do in the list of life accomplishments we’ve set out for ourselves to achieve.

And since this year I turned 30, I decided in that bed that I can’t and won’t waste any more time dwelling on my life’s what ifs and maybes. Maybe is a rabbit hole I refuse to fall into any further. Maybe isn’t what is and what was. Maybe is complete fiction. In the end what counts is that when it comes to the pursuit of my dreams I have at least tried. In other words, “You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do”.

So like Elle, I choose to do, no matter how ridiculous it may seem, no matter how many people think it to be impossible, and no matter how much it scares me to do it.

Instead of letting my thoughts spiral in a state of half awareness. I got out of bed, and that, my friends, is an act of resistance in itself.

I wrote down in my agenda this weeks errands and my daily adult tasks. I cut my nails, showered, brushed my teeth, and I sat down finally, draped a warm fuzzy blanket over me on the sofa, opened up my journal and started to write. A habit I yearn to have more time to do, more peace in my day to feel inspired and just the sheer uninterrupted joy of putting pen to paper and letting my mind and my heart flow in a state of catharsis.

If my time is to be capitalized, it is an act of resistance to pour every minute into becoming the version of the woman that lives rent free in my mind. Because maybe all I need is to be delusional enough to think that there is no other possible outcome than the one my heart desires. Because maybe, just maybe, it is, “not that hard.”

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Before my current job, I had done remote work for almost 5 years. Now, 2 years in, I go to the office in person Monday through Friday. So naturally to my goody-two-shoes-ness, working from home today seems mischievous, and slightly like sinning. The two years since my in-person routine and entire life balance shifted, my partner and I have taken very different roles within the relationship and responsibilities.

His remote-only job allows him to go grocery shopping when rush hour hasn’t hit, do loads of laundry I would procrastinate until the weekend to do, and all the menial housework that should not have a gender-specific role (but hence does still). Nevertheless, we divide tasks and conquer accordingly. Those are our household norms, and the foundation of our relationship. It is appreciated work on both ends, and what I call the bare minimum.

So, this morning when I woke up for my adventurous day working from home, and with my regained homely freedom, I made coffee. A ritual that for the past two years has only been practiced on weekends. A half smile curved on the ends of my lips as I opened the Mason Jar with freshly grounded coffee beans. Even as I poured the grains into the mocka pot and spilled some around the rim I didn’t flinch. It was part of the process, a part of my ritual. A few minutes later the sizzling noise of the coffee brewing perked my ears, it was like a gospel choir singing. The scent filled me like the smell of an old stone church, where earthy mildew and incense mix together and prepare you for prayer. My insides giggled with delight. I took out my favourite coffee cup, a green ceramic mug we picked up in a Souk in Marrakech. I took out almond milk from the fridge, cold enough to sustain the arrival of summer heat. As I poured the milk into my coffee, I fixated on the swirl the mixing made, around and around in a dance of faith, knowing in a moment they would become one. A sprinkle of cinnamon and a teaspoon of raw honey, and my ritual had been fully performed.

When lunch arrived, Tom left for his co-working space like usual to get out of the house in the afternoon (the golden retriever high energy to my black cat indoor mood). And like usual, I went into the kitchen for my second cup of coffee, my afternoon prayer. It was only when the mocka pot had already sung its song, that an earlier sin came into confession, I had run out of milk. I threw away the milk carton in the morning after pouring it all into my first coffee cup.

In hopes that there was a second carton, I looked in our pantry. Nothing. Disappointment started seeping through me. I was sure I had asked Tom to get me more milk earlier that week, so where was it? Reluctantly, I opened the refrigerator door. Sitting there, cooly and to my surprise was a new unopened carton of almond milk. I stared at it. I stared at it perhaps too long, lingering on the feeling of surprise, but most of all lingering on the feeling of being seen. Of being met. He had at some point in time during the day put in the new milk in the fridge. Perhaps it was intentional, perhaps it was done without a second thought, or perhaps subconsciously my needs were in the back of his mind, like a prophecy whispering to him that I would need cold milk.

As I stared at the cold almond milk ready for me to pour, I made a mental note of the moment. I made the mental note because I would prefer to write down a bible filled with these moments, than the tiny annoyances of mundane domestic affairs. I wrote down this moment like a new line of scripture, because after three years of dating it can be easy to overlook the small fragments inside a relationship, daily testaments of love. I carved the moment into my brain as a reminder that to be loved is to be met, and sometimes it’s as simple as a carton of almond milk.

The men portrayed in the documentary understand that they are being oppressed; they just can’t grasp the point that this is what patriarchy is and what it does to men. Instead of naming it for what it is, they coined their own term for patriarchy and injected its most inherent hypermasculine values into it. To these men, and perhaps to other men, they see patriarchy as only something that affects women. As the enemy to all feminists, in these men’s minds, they could never wrap their heads around the idea that perhaps what feminism fights against is also the very same enemy they have just uncovered. Because how dare we, men and women, share the same common enemy? Is that not the very objective of the system that has been created to oppress and divide us?

Patriarchy 2.0

As the manosphere puts it, their enemy is “The Matrix”, the so-called “people higher up in power that keep them oppressed and set men up for failure.” Their solution is to create their own world and system, the manosphere, which uses patriarchy’s most inherent values and its archaic gender-based norms and biases rooted in misogyny and sexism as their bible, making men like the Tate brothers their gods of worship.

Fighting patriarchy by creating your own version of it, rooted in patriarchy itself, will not free or liberate men. It will never free or liberate men.

They’ve taken the very system that oppresses them and injected steroids into it, creating the manosphere, a hypermasculine version of patriarchy. Patriarchy 2.0. All the while excusing their misogynistic and sexist behaviour as “love for women.” Claiming they know what is best for women, “women don’t even know what they want,” one interviewee stated in the documentary. What they call love is in fact control and possession. Love is freeing; love is respecting; love is empathy and the grace of growth. These men don’t love women, they see women as objects whose perceived “birth value”, being born a woman (with tits and a vagina), is for men’s own sexual exploitation and pleasure.

When this ideology was presented by one of the interviewees in the documentary, what immediately came to mind was the scene from The White Lotus Season 3, where Sam Rockwell’s character has a brutally intimate and chilling conversation with Walter Goggin’s character. He spews a monologue about his sexual desires of wanting to be with Asian women, which was his main motive of moving to Thailand in the first place. After a 4 minute monologue, Rockwell’s character comes to the conclusion that his ‘insatiable’ sexual desires ultimately stemmed from the idea that he in fact wanted to be an Asian woman. Fucking his way to the answer. Which leads me to think about womb envy, the counter-argument to Freud’s penis envy. Perhaps why these men truly despise women is the sheer fact they will never know the experience of birthing life, of creating life within ourselves.

“What have women created?” Asks another one of Theroux’s interviewees. Life, is my answer; we create life. Men are envious of our emotional vulnerability, our emotional intimacy. Envious that we are not emotionally constipated as they are taught to be from birth by societal norms. And at the end of the day the life that we create is the very same life men take every day because they have no emotional attachment to the concept that is birthing life.

“We have it all” they claim. But do they really? The hypocrisies outlined within the documentary are ever growing as the minutes pass. Despite these boasting claims, the men in the manosphere don’t have it all. They are young boys cosplaying as grown-ass-“successful men”, failed by the very system created by their founding fathers, meant to protect and accrue white male power and domination over the rest of us.

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The Roots of the Rage

Theroux’s portrayal of them as men who come from broken homes makes a good point in understanding how they have arrived at this worldview, however, it does not excuse the behaviour. We are all victims of patriarchy and of its violent wrath, yet women still find the way to heal and to grow, to overcome their struggles and the weight of the world instilled by them. It is no excuse for perpetuating more violence.

Instead of owning their emotions and healing from trauma, they have made women and feminism the enemy of their troubles. Women and feminism haven’t failed men. Men have failed men, and women. Creating a new system where their mutual repression and oppression by small, bigoted men in power has always created, and will always create, division and fuel hatred.

I say this with empathy: the manosphere should be angry. Except they’ve made women their enemy and the source and target of that anger, rather than the very men and system that built the cage that confines them. They should be angry at the men at the top that have taught them that it is weak to show emotion, weak to fail, weak to not be physically desirable to the male gaze. Men should be angry at the economic, political and social inequalities of the sexes that also divide by race and class, not just gender.

What Women Want

Women do know what they want. They don’t need a man that merely provides, they need men who are emotionally intelligent, who respect their partners, their sisters, their mothers, their friends, and who respect women as equals. Who respect non-binary people and trans women, and accept the fact that people in society look very different from their own individualised self. Women need men who are aware of the impact that patriarchy has on their lives, the lives of women, of children, and of society as a whole.

Theroux’s take in the documentary lacks this crucial perspective, specifically, the impact of patriarchy and the heightened role the manosphere has had upon women and society. He focuses on the individual role of influencers but lacks depth in understanding the women that surround them and their true views, or even the women on the other side, those who have had to watch friends and family be red-pilled into adopting extreme views on gender roles and their own self-worth. We know that by the end of the documentary, one of the interviewees’ girlfriends, Angie, breaks up with her partner, yet we get no understanding as to why or how that choice culminated. We don’t get to hear about the women’s experiences that go on one of the interviewee’s rage bait podcasts or why they choose to be there in the first place. We don’t get a deeper understanding into the point of view of another interviewee’s mother who condones his son’s ideological way of thinking yet still enables him to continue to perform in an extreme and controversial way in the name of money and likes.

Overall it’s frustrating to see and listen to the insights that these young men present, they are, in many ways, right about what is causing their struggles. The women’s liberation movement has done so much for female empowerment, yet many men have chosen to stay behind. They have chosen to blame the very movement that seeks to dismantle the same system that is oppressing us all.

Perhaps they, the manosphere, have been awakened, in knowing they are being oppressed. But they have yet to be enlightened.

Roughly a year ago I was in Paris visiting the city for a Paul McCartney concert. I spent four days exploring the city that was my first introduction to Europe when I was 16 years old. More than a decade later I found myself walking around the same cobbled stone streets and going into museums I had never had the chance or money to visit. It was within these museum walls that a sense of deep despair overwhelmed me, I came to the realisation that I could not enjoy art the way I used to when I was younger. I no longer could view it subjectively, but only objectively. With every painting I observed the names were all too familiar. Men reigned upon the walls; among the few paintings that truly caught my eye, the fine print revealed the name of a woman. This only happened three times.

There is a curious internal sense of rage that consumes me when my mind begins to spiral into the dark corners of history where ‘anonymous’ is most certainly a woman, and where all the blank spaces in between every male authored painting, there could and should be enough space for that of a woman’s. I was so jarred by the experience that I wrote about it to express the internal war and monologue happening at the time of the museum visit.

i hate museums

because with every single row and frame all i can see

is a women who peered over the shoulders of man just to take a peek

perhaps an unwanted critique

i hate museums because with each step my foot takes

makes an echo in a void where women do not hold space

i hate museums because all i ever see

is a man is a man is man

that dared to be

but where are the women?

dead before they even dared

or dead because they dared

behind every painting authored by a man

i wish i wish i wish

to seek something different

something true

not a copy and paste of the same hues

the same tones, the same bones the same breasts

because the only women i see

are hung up on the museum walls

with little name to their figure

except perhaps the wife of some lord

or daughter of somebody

i hate museums

because in the silence of the halls

in the echoes from my shoes

the silence from all the women

who yearned to create

who yearned to explore

who had dreams of becoming

of greatness

is only overshadowed in the empty spaces

from one painting to the next

where an equal great image, creation

deserves to be admired by the men and women

who adorn museums on Sundays afternoons

who search for inspiration

for something new

but the new is buried

and the old is hung high

researched and revered

and i shall never know

who was sue

or who was woman number 2

or any woman who dared greatly

to create something new

In the year that had passed I rarely visited many museums. That is until October, when my birthday gift - a museum passport to several museums around the city - was about to expire. So there I was, handing in my free ticket to a 16 euro museum exhibition. I was ready and armed to dissect and take apart the walls and artists that I would observe. However, I found myself shocked and pleasantly surprised that that would be far from the truth.

I walked around the exhibition Miró and the United States at the Miró Foundation in Barcelona. For the first time, I noticed a different pattern from the art that hung that I had never experienced before. With each artist that I noted down on my notes app, refreshingly, almost every piece of art was created by a woman. Some might think, that the author does not matter when it comes to art, that one must separate the art from the artist lest we should enjoy art at all. Although I understand this point of view, I stubbornly refuse to live by it. Art is, and forever will be political, and the lack of representation of women in itself is a political act and statement to silence women and write them out of history.

As I walked around the 14 different rooms of the exhibition, I saw art that I had never seen before and it was all art made by a woman. There were names I never heard of or knew existed, there were names that were used by women to sound more masculine that prompt me to investigate further to see who they were only to find out it was a woman using a more masculine name to throw off judges and curators, art dealers and spectators, because how dare we enjoy the art made by a woman or place it on the same level of “genius” with that of a man’s. Women may be deemed exceptional, but god forbid, genius.

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In an article I read recently, the author talked about Rosalía’s New album Lux and debated that the word genius is thrown around too loosely, and that to call her a genius disrespects the artistry and talent of the entire team and everyone else involved with creation of the album. And although I agree that the term creative genius is tossed around too frequently, I have never read a news article headline debating the same argument when it comes to male artists like Kanye West, Rick Ruben, Tyler the Creator, etc. It is only when a woman like Rosalía brings forth a genre bending album that we must debate whether she solely deserves the title of creative genius.

At one point throughout the Miró exhibition there was one particular photograph that stood out to me. It held no title or explanation which propelled me to go into a rabbit hole to figure out what it was about. As rabbit holes go, I wasn’t disappointed. I came across the treasure that is Christina Weyls investigation into The Women of Atelier 17, and with it an explanation behind the photograph and the many women pictured in it. Atelier 17 was a community of artists that included many women artists (Louise Bourgeois, Alice Trumbull Mason, Minna Citron, Sue Fuller, Helen Phillips and more) that benefited from the space to explore their work and network their way into exhibitions.

In Weyl’s work she describes:

“Nearly one hundred women artists were affiliated with Atelier 17, the avant-garde printmaking studio, during its time in New York City between 1940 and 1955. Across its three successive locations in Greenwich Village, Atelier 17 became a laboratory that facilitated women artists’ exposure to and eventual practice of modernist styles, including abstraction, surrealism, and expressionism. Making prints at Atelier 17 also served as a conduit through which female artists realized extraordinary professional achievements and, for many, fostered camaraderie and networks of sisterhood decades before the women’s art movement of the 1970s.”

I highly recommend you spend a couple of hours diving through the biographies of the women she documents. It is work like Weyl’s that foster hope within me that the history of women artists, and women and nonbinary people in general, is not, and will not be lost with time. And it is the specific efforts of museum and art curators to factor in the importance of women in the arts in order to undue the centuries of women’s exclusion and historical impact within the art world in general. As per the Miró’s Foundation page, the exhibition states:

Through this exchange, the exhibition reconfigures the understanding of the place of Miró's work in the history of art, shifting the customary focus on France and placing the United States as a pivotal point in his artistic development. This new narrative not only revisits Miró's legacy, but also highlights the importance of many female artists of the period. These creators were essential in redefining contemporary art, whether as references for other artists or as protagonists of innovative currents such as gestural painting, abstraction and action painting.

What I learned from almost a year of abstention from museum going is that it is also in the power of the art consumer to research and disseminate the work of women and non-binary artists, just as much as critically demanding their inclusion in museum exhibitions and creative spaces. If art is to represent humanity, than all of humanity, not just the men, should be allocated the name as ‘artist’ and enjoyed by the masses as equally as Miró, Monet, Tamayo, Dalí, Da Vinci et al. So the next time someone asks me about my favorite artists I can tell them all about the women of Atelier 17, Lee Krasner and the creative genius that is Rosalía.

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Further Reading

Women In Art History

The Power of Art

Why have there been no great women artists?

Not even two hours before, I was sat in my boss’s office for our ritual Monday meeting, crying (a task that was not on our weekly agenda). There was something off about me from the moment I sat on the chair. A sensation of wanting to bury myself deep, of something gnawing at my brain and tugging at my heart. He could sense this.

“Are you stressed?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “I’m actually far from it; this is probably by far the easiest job I’ve ever had.” (The latter I did not actually mention, but it was true.)

“I need structure and processes,” I told him, “I keep getting lost in all the changes and all the steps.”

But perhaps deep down I feel lost in life in general. I was turning 30 in a month. And again I found myself at a crossroads where I’m rethinking my career, my purpose, my relationship with the city I live in, and trying to understand where my relationship with my partner is heading. I think in that moment it all caved in on me. Instead of ‘girlbossing’ my inconformities with a list of action plans, I cried. By saying these things out loud, I think I finally convinced myself that I am not happy with where I stand today—and it is no one’s fault but mine. I’ve procrastinated for three years my psychiatrist’s orders to get diagnosed for ADHD, my stomach hurts when I digest and I still don’t know why, and it all stems from my lack of being able to structure myself and prioritize what is important: me.

I am ready for transformation again, ready to rebuild, ready for change, and the cost in my case has always been feeling out of place all of a sudden in different areas of my life. An intuitive sensation that destruction and rebirth are just arising on the horizon. As I headed back home at the end of the working day after crying in front of my boss, I brushed past a girl while trying to get out of my stop on the metro station.

When my eyes fell upon who I had bumped into, I was met with the message “LIVE A LIFE YOU WILL REMEMBER,” inscribed in slab-serif typography and in all caps.

It jolted me to a stop. I was tempted to take a picture but I couldn’t move. I stood on the platform watching the girl move around the crowds of people with her neon green suitcase. The stroll of the wheels hitting the floor tiles echoed back to me.

If I was looking for a sign, this was truly it. Now, what to do with that phrase I am still figuring out. But in the two months since, I have contemplated many different things in my life: a new job, homeownership, chopping up my credit cards, traveling to places I have been meaning to travel to, and I booked four different doctor’s appointments I had been putting off for far too long.

It is a curious thing to wander around a city and be hit with the exact signs you are looking for. But I guess that’s what they are meant to be. After the incident with the girl and the tattoo, I remembered about all those other signs I had seen that had made me stop and think about why I was receiving them in that exact moment when it was just the perfect timing to see them in the first place.

I went through my camera roll on my phone from all the months of this past year, looking for the signs I had seen on t-shirts and took a snap of. I also realized all the things I had lived through in between those moments and the memories that made up the life I was living until today. As signs go, it is only when you are ready to receive them that your brain and your eye truly focus and take up the information around you to tell you “you’re on the right path,” or at least to console you that what you are thinking, and what your soul is craving is worth fighting for and most importantly—feeling through.

Looking back for all those signs made me realize I am right a the end of where I wanted to be a year ago, I had achieved the goals I had set out to achieve, lived through moments that have filled my heart, invested my time in building relationships that are only now blossoming into fruit, I thought about how a year ago I would have never been so vulnerable to open up to someone like my boss and let the know how I am truly feeling, or to most people for that matter, and most importantly all these little signs coming one after the made me realize: that I am living a life worth remembering, all I needed was my sign.

So look around for your sign.

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On the last warm Friday afternoon of the summer, I got off the Red Line at Plaça de Sants to meet a new friend. It was our first official one-on-one friend date. As adulting goes, it’s rare to make new friends at the ripe age of 29, so I was especially excited to have met someone I had instantly clicked with at a party several weekends before.

We sat down at a newly opened café in the Sants neighborhood of Barcelona, with beautiful red and purple tiles lining the ceramic bench and walls. Settled in with our matching matcha orders, our conversation brewed. We talked about our general lives, how we had ended up living in Barcelona, what we do for work—the usual small talk before getting into deeper thoughts and stirred feelings.

My friend was unfortunately in need of finding a new job; however, she wasn’t sure what to do next or which area she wanted to apply to. A year ago, I was also in a similar situation, needing to change jobs for one reason or another, knowing I could do and be more, knowing I wanted more.

We both started expressing how, although we like what we do, there’s an unknown inkling inside us, a whisper of dreams we can’t quite trace the origin of or figure out how to manifest. An inkling that we are meant to do something else, something we don’t yet fully know.

If one thing is true, I have become more trusting of the role the universe plays in aligning these feelings and thoughts with real-world effects. I mentioned to her that if anything, I’ve learned that life shifts wherever we put our focus.

With our matchas half full now, I told her that originally I had dreamt of being a diplomat or an ambassador to the United Nations. I dreamt of changing my community and working towards peace within war-torn countries. And for most of my university life and career, I was working toward that goal.

I studied my undergrad in International Relations. I volunteered for almost five years at the largest Model United Nations conference. I interned at the Foreign Ministry’s Department of Peace and Liaison to the United Nations. I received the highest honors for my bachelor’s thesis on the impact of women as agents in the reconstruction of war-torn countries.

On paper, I was doing everything to build this dream. For almost three years, before and throughout the pandemic, I applied to master’s programs. I got accepted into sixteen, and to my disbelief, even Cambridge University. However, I was never granted any of the scholarships I applied for. Rejection after rejection followed, and life started slipping away from me. Another dream that had been quietly budding inside me couldn’t be contained anymore.

The realization that everything I had worked for could have been for nothing because I wanted to be and do something completely different from what that 18-year-old freshman once dreamed of hit me like a truck.

The part of me I had kept hidden for years—the creative side nurtured since childhood by artistic parents—had been neglected so the academic intellect could thrive.

I got accepted into sixteen universities, all highly ranked, and I declined sixteen universities. It was then that I had to be truthful with myself: why was I applying? I no longer wished to be a diplomat. I wanted to pursue social issues through the lens of photography. I carried out a project with migrant workers and created my own magazine to publish it.

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“Why don’t you pursue design?” my mother said so nonchalantly, as I cried about the time and money spent on applications and the sensation that I was smart enough to pursue a degree but not financially fortunate enough to do it.

“Why don’t I study design?” I thought. “Because that’s not the path I’ve chosen.”

If I owe my mother anything, it is her sheer belief, instilled within me and my brother, that we can do and be anything we wish. If she hadn’t brought this subject up, I’m not sure I could have confronted it on my own.

Was I applying to master’s programs because it was the next thing to do? Yes.
Was I applying because I wanted to further my education? Yes.
Was I applying because a master’s would give me two years to understand what the fuck I actually wanted to do after being burnt out and disheartened by the implications of being a social servant and working in politics? Definitely yes.

As the straws in our matchas made that gurgling sound, air mixed with the last remnants of liquid, we decided to share a beautiful cup of peanut brioche topped with figs. It was, to say the least, mouth-wateringly delicious.

We devoured the brioche and the conversation. When we said our goodbyes and parted ways, all I could think about were the figs; the ones from the brioche and Plath’s own figs.

Written in the pages of Sylvia Plath’s most notable work, The Bell Jar, is the metaphor of the fig tree. The main character, Esther Greenwood, realizes that her life is like a fig tree: each branch and fig representing a different path she could choose and a different life she could embody. But never, in Esther’s mind, could she have all the figs or be all the things she wished or desired to be.

When the book was published, this was true for women at the time—and, speaking from my privilege, it still rings true today.

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked... I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose... and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”

Walking back home with a new connection formed, another person’s life going through the same shifts and changes I so familiarly know myself, I understood that there is no one fig, no single path we should or are destined to follow.

Herein lies the myth of the fig tree.

We aren’t meant to choose one branch of life and stick to it. We are blessed with many figs, many seasons, and many turns of fruit, which means that throughout life, as long as you keep watering your fig tree and tending to your interests, you will always have a fig to pursue.

You will always have a fig to feast on, and therein lies the truth: you don’t have to stick to one thing. The course of your life can change, grow, and evolve as long as you keep yourself well-watered and curious.

My journey thus far is proof that as long as I try, I can do and be anything, or at least fail and then try something new, something different. I don’t have to cling to the same branch or claw at the same fig over and over, hoping it will fall into my hands.

We are blessed to live in a time where change, although rarely linear or just, can happen. As long as you keep developing interests, your life will continue to blossom and bear fruit.

So eat as many figs as you damn please.

Stored away in a physical 10 L black container box in my mother’s house in Mexico, tucked under many childhood mementos, is my very first diary — complete with lock and key and all. My mother’s best friend gifted it to me either for a birthday or Christmas. I don’t remember those details. I was probably around seven or eight years old, and re-reading it now, the spelling was graciously incorrect for most words. But therein lie my first inscriptions of my day-to-day life: my thoughts and feelings as a child — what I was doing at school, the friends I was seeing, the things that, as a kid, I found significant enough to write down in a diary and archive forever. The year 2003 mark the upper corners of the pages.

Ever since, I have always kept some sort of journal or notebook of one kind or another. I wrote down the best — and mainly the worst — things I experienced during my teenage years, my existential crisis in my early and mid-twenties, and all the confusing feelings that came with it.

I never gave the act of keeping a journal any profound thought before. It was and has always been a part of my life since that very first gifted pink spiral notebook years and years ago—until I stumbled upon the essay “On Keeping a Notebook” by Joan Didion. Within her essay, she unfolds the personal inscriptions within her very own notebooks, trying to decipher what they meant and why she had written them down in the first place. With each entry she takes herself back into a moment, a past version of herself that once thought it significant to write down whatever the context of the moment in time was — a conversation overheard, a recipe for Sauerkraut, a dinner party, etc.

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Didion didn’t keep a notebook for the sake of keeping a factual record of her life. As she reminisces about past writings, she tries to grasp and find meaning in why she specifically wrote things down about people, times, and places she barely remembers now. “How it felt to me,” she writes, “that is getting closer to the truth about keeping a notebook.”

She continues to explain that, very different from keeping a diary in which one inscribes the day-to-day mundane details of life — an act she found boring — her notebook entries, on the other hand, would become slowly distorted perceptions of events. She writes:

This excerpt from her essay made me think about perception and how it shapes our reality, because I too sometimes go back to read old journal entries, and with each passing year that I do so, the memory seems to come alive in a different way depending on the Ana that reads it back. “Did I really write this?” I think to myself about an entry that is either extremely cringeworthy or too well written and poetic to think I could have ever come up with it. And with each passing version of myself that rereads an old entry, a new piece of memory unlocks — a detail I hadn’t remembered at all or can’t tell whether that new detail is truth or fabrication.

Nevertheless, the fabric of my life is woven within those journal entries: the good, the bad, and the cringe. As I grow older and (humbly) wiser, my perception of those times and past lives I jotted down — the intrusive thoughts and feelings of angst — creates a different picture within my head. My reality shifts into thinking, “how silly of me to cry over someone,” when in that moment I felt my life falling apart. Or perhaps I had overreacted or underreacted to a person’s actions toward me, or vice versa.

The ways in which I perceive the reality that was my past, my present, and my future are a culmination of experiences that have been so notable I wrote them down as an archival piece in the museum that is my soul. Blended with the experiences I am currently living and the ones I hope to one day live, my perception of life — and the biases and subjectivity that come with it — glistens like a kaleidoscope. Each turn of the reflective glass mirror reveals a different point of view of what my life was, is, and one day will be.

The art of archival writing in the form of journaling and note-taking — juxtaposed with our digital age, where our physical transformations are recorded and archived on social media and our phones overflow with photos — means that keeping notes is the only way to photocopy our internal state at a particular moment in our lives. It is a ritual that sets our other selves apart from each other with every filled page, with every thought written down, every strange observation we then find hard to understand the context behind or why we found it interesting. Keeping a notebook, like Didion writes, is “a good idea, then, to keep in touch, and I suppose that keeping in touch is what notebooks are all about. And we are all on our own when it comes to keeping those lines open to ourselves: your notebook will never help me, nor mine you.”

Unlike the photos we splatter across the digital social world, your thoughts and mine will always be the truest form of a record of who we once were and a prediction of who we will become.

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Extra reading & watching

Read the Full Essay here - On Keeping a Notebook by Joan Didion

R is for Reading

Two days before I left the city of Barcelona to embark on a 9 day trip with my two friends (our first trip of such lengths together), I was determined to bring along with me a book to have as an excuse for my own quiet time if (and most likely) needed. I walked into the only English book shop BackStory just 5 minutes from my apartment to search for what would be my necessary escape from over-socialization.

I had in mind that I wanted to read “Kitchen Confidential” by Anthony Bourdain as it would be the perfect trip to do so.

I was headed to the Portuguese islands of Azores in the middle of the Atlantic ocean. It would be the farthest and most adventurous trip I have taken and thus I thought Bourdain would be an inspiring read throughout the trip.

Sadly, the shop didn’t have it so I had to order it and wait until after my trip to pick-up and read. The did have however “The Stranger” by Albert Camus on the second-hand book shelf for just 6 euros. As it has been on my TBR list for years and seemingly how short of a novel it was, I bought it.

My honest review is that I had over-hyped it myself for how transcendental it could possibly be as it is so renowned. Which is not to say that for the time period it was written it was a ground-breaking novel to be published and studied. The truth of the matter is that I could not get passed the racist undertones and violence towards women that set premise to the story. Although many classics suffer from this, I also think that the message of absurdism and the meaningless of life is just something I completely disagree with. But sure, a man wrote an insightful book back in his day which we still study now, I get it. Ticked off the TBR and moving on to the next.

E is for Eating

August was spent dining and eating with friends. Whether it was trying an assortment of different sea food cuisine in the Azores to making Onigiris with Tif to eat on the beach (yes, a strange combination) - my palate definitely grew this month for the better. I tried sea food platters I normally would stray from. As a 20 year-long vegetarian, introducing sea food back into my life has been nothing but gradual. Yet, I do feel that with every new unlocked meal or species of fish (I still vehemently oppose and despise octopus) I am slowly becoming more fearless in every aspect of my life, stepping out of my comfort zone one action after another.

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P is for Playing

I watched great films and terrible films this month. Starting with the great - "Y Tu Mamá También” directed by Alfonso Cuarón. A Mexican film that paved way for Challengers and Call Me By Your Name. Hearty, transcendent, politically subversive, and great storytelling. That is my sell for watching this movie. Am I biased, yes because most recently watching anything that reminds me of life back in Mexico makes me immediately nostalgic. On another note I also watched “Synchronic”, all I have to say is save yourself 2 hours of a good idea porrly executed and with too many plot holes to ignore to actually enjoy the film.

O is for Obsessing

August was aesthetically stimulating. There were so many new things that I saw and was introduced too, little ransom things I would see on a shopping window or on the other side of my camera lens. Overall I would sum up that this month I was obsessed with the aesthetics of what I deem pretty. Whether that is packaging design for sardines or gin bottles, the charming Portuguese house we stayed at in Sao Miguel, or the vast postcard worthy landscapes of the Azores, and capitalistically my new bikini - pretty was my august obsession.

R is for Recommending

Whatever plans you have in the month of September, the only true thing I can recommend is to face your fears. Confront the people you need to have difficult and uncomfortable discussions with. Whether its your friends, your mom, your partner, your boss - have it. I confronted many people in August. The word “confront” itself may seem or imply a negative connotation towards the overall vibe of the conversation, but truly I say “confront” in a sense that I confronted my fears of making myself an inconvenience and speaking my mind about things that I did not necessarily like. I did this with my boss, I did this with my friends before going on a lengthy trip with them and I did this with my partner. As a recovering people-pleaser, I avoid difficult conversations at all costs. But with age I’ve come to terms that my girl mathing of these costs were counter productive. I was loosing more avoiding conversations and gaining a lot when having them. Have the damn conversation.

T is for Treating

As I’ve given away, I spent 9 days vacationing in the Azores Islands. And I can say with the the utmost sincerity that it is by far one if not the most beautiful places I have ever had the privilege to visit. The Azores is made up of 9 islands creating an archipelago that formed from the eruption of volcanos. Hydrangeas are a beautiful plague the paint the scenery lilac blue every inch of the islands. In the span of 9 days we boarded 6 planes, rented 2 cars and traversed 3 different islands: Terceira, Flores and Sao Miguel.

I didn’t want to leave. And although the locals promised me that the winter was long, cold and unbearable - the summer weather, the tight knit communities, the fresh sea food, and natural wonders were enough to put the winter dread past me and genuinely think about packing up my life in Barcelona and move.

This trip didn’t come without its hesitations or difficulties. Before traveling I knew I’d need to confront my friends beforehand. As there had been some things within our friendship that had bothered me and I knew that if I didn’t confront them before - my sealed up emotions would silently emerge during the trip and potentially reek havoc on it.

I also felt the guilt of spending my vacation days and money on a leisurely trip instead of buying a plane ticket to visit my family for Christmas. A feeling I know my family does not foster, but rather I pressure myself into thinking that it is selfish and irresponsible.

Fortunately, like I mentioned int the R section of the recap, I talked with my friends and the trip went by as smoothly as it can go with three girls traveling to a remote chain of islands in the middle of nowhere. It was a necessary trip and my bond with them has only but depend and strengthened.

I left the the trip with the feeling that my spirit of adventure had been reinstated, the readiness to try new and unfamiliar foods, to embrace a different culture and its people, stronger ties to my friends and a city that is now my home, and that although family is important - I too deserve to see the world and discover knew things.

With love,

Ana

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Before I met Roman, I'd like to think I was a sane person. Wholeheartedly, I believe he was the first man to ever truly see me. My brain piqued his curiosity more than my physicality. I also think that is what most terrified him of me. Because the feeling was mutual. We held each other's mirrors up to ourselves. I saw him for everything he was and everything he wasn't. I saw the sadness that clouded his green eyes, the fog that obscured his path. He was a man that had the depth of the ocean, yet showed only the shoreline to his friends. Fearing the open sea, he made himself out to be the alpha male, obnoxious and loud. When in fact he was sweet, tender and desperately wanted to thrive. He was a Taurus, trapped in the labyrinth of his own mind.

Roman asked me out at a party. He was insufferable since the moment I arrived calling me “sweetheart” every chance he could get. He got three chances before I told him to stop. “I’m not your sweetheart," I said firmly. Even more boldly I interjected,"you don't fool me, you wear a mask and I see right through it." His pupils dilated and my heart fell into my chest. He stood almost 6 feet tall, broad shoulders and here I was small and naive holding a mirror up to him. Yet who was I to think I should even do so?

I was 19 years old at the time and until then I had never properly been asked out on a date before. Or at least never by someone that for the past two months had ignited an intrigue in me I never thought I would have the chance to explore.

We had met at a Catholic Youth Summer Camp. He was my cousin Marcelo's best friend. As life would have it I had actually already met him 6 months prior when he assisted with his then girlfriend to my other cousin's birthday party. Without knowing, he had infiltrated both my mother and my father’s side of the family. Two days before the summer camp started Marcelo called me on the phone, and asked me if I wanted to go. We weren’t very close and neither was I religious. I believe in faith but not in institutionalized religion. He convinced me that aside from the whole Jesus spiel, it was a great way to get to know yourself. He wasn't wrong there.

I accepted as long as his sister, my cousin Max, would also go. Fast forward and we spent an entire week secluded in a service-less convent, showering in freezing cold water and practicing our spirituality. It was in these vulnerable moments where small glances were stolen. I never thought too much into it, because I never thought he would ever take an interest in me. He was by all sense of the words a “pretty boy” with the European beauty standards women in my city desired most in a man. I watched different girls make their approaches, obnoxiously flirting with him. I observed like a wall flower, quiet until my opinion and cemented values forced me to speak my mind. And although I saw these moments where he would be observing me I only thought that perhaps it was because he found me peculiar or strange, like a foreign creature observed for the first time, never a girl whose beauty was captivating enough to be looked at.

I hadn't properly showered for a week. There were no cute outfits put on and no makeup on my face. I bore myself bare, at my most raw and most of all at my most me. If this is what he saw, it was also what he took away from me.

My cousin Marcelo was right, I learned a lot about myself during that week. I filled my glass up full with love from myself and love from whatever divinities exist out in the universe. I walked away from the summer camp with a strong sense of who I was and who I wanted to become. My feet were firmly rooted in the foundation that was my soul, my entire life's being and everything I had overcome prior to that week. It was the first time in all my life I ever truly felt awake and at peace with my very own existence.

Then Roman happened. He took me on my first date and many others. Looking back, it was a summer romance that only lasted 3 months. As summer romances go it was fast paced and heated. At the beginning, he tried to convince me that I was going to fall in love with him in 10 days, that would be all he needed. I found it quite ridiculous and odd. True love is a slow burn. It starts out as a lit match and gradually increases into a warm fireplace until every corner of your body feels the warmth of this very love. Him on the other hand lit his match and poured kerosene on it.

We spent most of the summer weekends at parties with this new found spiritual community. It was at his cousin's pool where he stole a kiss from me. It wasn't romantic. It wasn't passionate, it was him playing around with me and teasing me until I turned my head towards him and accidentally brushed upon his lips. My memory fails at remembering our actual first kiss, but I do remember all the rest, even the very last one. Each made my heart burst with glee with pure ecstasy. We were twin flames orbiting each other as we spiraled further into the cosmos until one of us eventually crashed into the other. Melting away into a fiery bliss. Destruction was inevitable. I'd never tasted heartbreak before this.

I can’t pinpoint a moment where anything in particular went wrong. Only that one day he loved me and the next day he didn’t. The kerosene completely engulfed our relationship in the matter of minute moments.

He was insistent at the very beginning to know what I wanted out of the relationship. We’d only been properly dating for three weeks and I told him I couldn’t know yet, because it was too soon. I still didn't know him well enough to know if I wanted a committed relationship. He said “well I want a long term relationship”, to which I said nothing. When we broke up he said I was too green, too ripe for a relationship but I also think he never gave me the chance. It was him who wanted to speed things up so much. It was him who held the can of kerosene. It was him who told me if I wanted to be officially his girlfriend out of the blue without ever discussing it beforehand. He wanted a label, and I just wanted to get to know him. I wanted to fall in love without the pressure of knowing what it would become or how it needed to be portrayed in our social circles.

I wanted to fall in love at my own pace, tread the waters lightly. And when it came to diving head first into the relationship, when I was convinced that I was in love with him and deemed worthy of said relationship and said love, he backed out. “He got cold feet," my cousin Max told me. All of that obnoxious flaunting and flirting for nothing. I cried myself to sleep for many months.

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We never truly broke up the first time. We said we would take some time to think about things. But what the fuck did that actually mean? On a hot summer's day when I was supposed to be picked up by him to go to a pool party he said I should go in a different car. This car crashed before getting to said party. We were all fine, but as I stood on the side of the road imagining what could have been and what wasn't, the only thing I wanted most was to be comforted. He did no such thing. He was cold and distant. He barely spoke a word to me, and then he threw me into a pool. Perhaps at that moment I thought it was him becoming playful again, but now I know that that is far from the case. We met up later again that same day to go to another party, again he didn't speak to me once throughout the night. So I did what any 19 year old would do. I got drunk.

The night was dwindling and the alcohol in me had evaporated from the heat of the summer. As I walked from the bathroom back into the backyard that was the stage for the party, he stopped me to confront me and said we should talk tomorrow, I told him I was sober enough to talk right now. What was the point of waiting until tomorrow? He ushered me into the front part of the house away from the backyard crowd. He started his speech by saying how much he admired me, how I was one of the most incredible women he'd ever met, how he wanted to do and be everything for me. How he had me on a pedestal. Then he confirmed what I had known from the very start, what I had told him I knew he was hiding from the very beginning, hiding behind that mask of his.

He said with a certain type of sadness, almost pity, that he felt lost and that he didn’t feel like he could give me what I deserved. He had put me on a pedestal, only to take a hammer and topple me over. Falling from the heights from which he had placed me unbeknownst to me. In turn, I told him I never asked him to do that. That I did not value him for what I had accomplished and what he hadn't, that I didn't compare my accomplishments to his which at my age, yes, were much more than him. I had been flown to New York twice to volunteer for the largest Model United Nations conference in the US. I was on the student council for my university major. I had a five year plan. In his eyes I had it all figured out. I was 19, he was 22. And unbeknownst to him, I valued him most because of his kindness, because of his love and devotion for his friends and family, because of the dreams he spoke about with hopeful ambition in his eyes.

It was the first time I was made to feel small by a man who was overshadowed by his own perception of my grandness and his fragile ego. I do not think I am grand, I am only me. Five year plans change, and the dreams I whispered to him are not the same dreams I whisper to another man now. Yet, the psychological impact that this had on me was deep and cutting. To feel that all the good things about me, all the things that made me passionate, that fueled my hopes and dreams were the very same things that created a barrier to receive love - subsequently engraved in my brain that as long as I shined I would be utterly unworthy of it.

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My world and my identity collapsed. I know now that it was myself, and myself only, that yielded him the power to do so. But I didn't know any better. In my eyes he was perfect with all his imperfections, and I wanted nothing more than to be loved by him. So naturally, I snapped. I felt completely insane like I had orchestrated not only the relationship but its demise and I was solely responsible for it.

A month after we broke up it was November, and I was turning 20. Instead of having an amazing birthday, I spent it crying in the bathroom, completely drunk off my mind. The worst part was that everyone saw, all of his friends that formed this so-called spiritual community saw the mess I had let myself become. It's one of those core memories you think back on and cringe because of how embarrassing it was. No one asked me if I was okay, no one asked me what he had done. They just watched the circus show knowing they had front row tickets because they knew the conductor. I called him at one point that night while locked in the upstairs bathroom. I was angry that he wasn't there, that he hadn’t shown up. He had broken the silence and texted me happy birthday that day. I told him he was pathetic and a coward, which I have no regrets in saying and no embarrassment. We didn't speak for months after.

Things had truly only ended two weeks after the party where he told me he had me perched up on a pedestal. That was in early October. After these two weeks of not knowing what “time and space” truly meant to figure things out, and after he wouldn’t even see me to discuss what that would mean, whether he would see other people or not, I told him that I didn't want to give him time or space. I told him firmly that he didn't deserve me, to which he responded with the classic, you are not breaking up with me I am breaking up with you.

Then the birthday text message came in and my stomach churned with anxiety and anger about how he had treated me, and ultimately the raging fact that I still wanted him. That I wanted him at my birthday, to see me in my lace outfit, see me surrounded by my own friends and how they showered me with love and support. But that never happened. I called him a coward and the rest is blacked out from my drunken memory.

He was still my cousin's best friend, so I bumped into him a lot. Or things would get back to me because he would talk about me with my cousins. “He knows he fucked up,” they would say,” he thinks you guys will end up dating in the future.”

That never happened. The closest contact we had was a year later. We attended the same wedding where both he and I slept over at my cousin's house. He was already dating his now wife, and in a mix up thinking it was my cousin walking up the stairs instead of him I asked out in the darkness to help me unzip my dress. I was tense and uncomfortable. My bare back was the most skin he'd ever seen of me. I bore my soul to him and yet it was this moment where I truly felt he overstepped. The thing I least ever wanted to be was just another body to him. Yet in that moment I think it clicked that I truly only ever was that to him.

I thought Roman would be the first of firsts. My first love, my first boyfriend, my first time but all he ended up being was the first of many moments I would let a man’s actions completely destroy my self-worth and self-confidence. It was the first time I was gaslit into thinking everything I had done was wrong. It was the first time I was love bombed into actually dating a man thinking he must be really interested in me. He was my first heart break, my first could-have-been-something, and for everything it’s worth he was the quintessential relationship that would define my interactions and apprehensiveness towards men for the next decade.

I have suffered a lot of trauma as a child, but the emotional manipulation and subsequent abandonment that came so suddenly and without warning would have me walking on my tiptoes into every relationship trying my hardest not to make any sudden movements and sound that would make them scurry away like cockroaches when the light is turned on. I dimmed my light for so many men in the fear it would cast an even bigger shadow on them. I curated my wardrobe, my tastes and my personality to match that of a man’s likeness. I was a “pick me” girl, a “cool” girl, “not like other girls” girl. I molded myself into being loved, and was only met with deep cuts and the fear that I perhaps would never be loved.

I thought I was learning to tame unicorns when in fact all they were were jackasses. Emotionally unavailable men became the pattern I followed. Subconsciously, I was trying to redeem and mend the broken heart of a 19 year old girl who really thought someone had fallen in love with her, not for her body or appearance but because of the way she existed in the world. And that truly broke me. I walked through life guy after guy only confirming this intrusive thought. Perhaps I was choosing the same type of mold of man to prove Roman wrong. I wasn't the problem he was, and I could fix that. But we all know that you can't fix broken men nor is it your responsibility to.

Only after a decade have I been able to come to this conclusion. And only after a decade of navigating love, men and our current dating culture have I - little by little - been able to unlearn this pattern. Unlearning all the things I thought made me unlovable. Because they were never true. They were a false perception of someone else's reality. Of someone else's mirror merely held up by my own hand. And only after a decade can I say - I will never dim my light for any man in the fear of effacing their own ego.

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But how did we get here?

Resentment isn't something caused by another person; rather, it's an emotion evoked by your interactions with them. It arises from interactions where you have failed to assert yourself and your value.

You people-please because you deeply fear conflict. You're so afraid of being disliked that you choose to dislike yourself instead, ignoring your own needs for the comfort of others. Have you noticed how this is causing you more harm than good? You've become addicted to the word "yes," treating it as your personal shield against clashing with people and their needs, intentions, and opinions.

Every time you've said yes to something you didn't actually want to do, every time you've found yourself in a scenario you never wished to be in, every time you've failed (or didn't even bother to try) to assert your boundaries—that's where resentment creeps in.

Resentment is a statue carved out of missed opportunities to say "no," missed opportunities to lay down the foundations of your boundaries.

You don't resent your friend because they dragged you to a party you had no desire to attend. You don't resent them because you yet again put their needs before yours. You resent them because, for whatever reason or whatever power you've given them, you forgot that you had any say or choice in the matter.

Brené Brown once said that resentment is a function of envy. It's "the feeling of frustration, judgment, anger, 'better than,' and/or hidden envy related to perceived unfairness or injustice."

People-pleasers know resentment all too well because we are deadly allergic to the word "no" and how uncomfortable it is to even say.

Brown states that resentment arises when we fail to set boundaries, ask for what we need, or even when our expectations aren't met due to factors beyond our control.

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The sad truth about resentment is that we choose to let it become the default setting of a relationship, which will most surely be the precursor to its end.

You've collected so many statues at this point—enough to fill a gallery of all the people you’ve lost due to resentment.

Those people you carved out of anger, out of spite. The cold stone sits in silence, its heftiness weighing on you. The space it takes up in your gallery brings you misery. You could have curated a gallery out of love and beautiful memories, but instead your gallery demonstrates your lack or willingness to show up for yourself. To truly embody your authentic self - all the no’s included.

We would rather cut ties, go no contact, than face the ugly truth that time and again we fail to value ourselves and rightfully represent our own person in our day-to-day relationships. We'd rather fill up galleries of resentful statues than paint portraits of healthy relationships. We'd rather sacrifice years of a bond created than speak up for ourselves because it goes so against our people-pleasing nature. And then we cry and take pity on ourselves and say, "Why have I lost yet another friend?"

We walk slowly through that gallery of statues, each one evoking a specific memory, a specific instance where resentment settled in and carved out the last touches of our statues.

Resentment is the chisel that chips away at those we love most. Yet, we are the masters who hold it in our hands.

Our own inability to truly communicate our feelings, even the ones that make us twist with discomfort, has led to the demise of our best friendships.

At this day and age, at almost 30, I'd rather sit in discomfort than have to invest once again in carving out a new friendship.

That's not to say that some people shouldn't be removed from your life, but I'd welcome you to reflect on your past and think: Is there any friendship that could have been salvaged if only I had communicated better? If you had told them how certain things in your relationship made you feel?

I know I do.

With love,

Ana

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Aside from re-rereading and continuously editing my essays for How To Love Yourself, I’ve also finished writing a short essay about my parasocial encounter with a family of peregrine falcons that nested atop the Sagrada Familia, which came out Friday!

In regards to actually reading other content aside from my own, I have been enjoying reading these other substack essays:

1. Maybe You’re Not Actually Trying by Useful Fictions

2. is this maturity or just detachment? by Preet

3. I don't dream of marriage or motherhood. by Simi

E is for Eating

We celebrated my friends Lidia’s 29th birthday at Tierra Brava. She’s my first true friend that I made when I moved to Barcelona, and it’s nice to feel like the birthday’s and celebrations are adding up along with the years and time invested in relationships and this city.

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P is for Playing

This week I watched Jamón Jamón by Bigas Luna, the film where Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem met for the first time. To sum it up, it’s weird. Entertaining yes, outdated for sure, but still an interesting watch even if it’s just to read the Letterboxd reviews at the end because shit is funnyyyyy.

I would recommend watching Pedro Almódovar’s “Mujeres Al Borde De un Ataque de Nervios” (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown) to get into the groove of iconic Spanish Cinema beforehand.

O is for Obsessing

Obsessing over time. Especially time with friends and loved ones. I've been spending a lot of time with my friend Kai, whom only until this past year, we've been really creating a deep and meaningful friendship. Moving to a different country comes with the challenge of going through the process of peeling back onion layers with people. Layer by layer uncovering a new part, a new connection. Solidifying your friendship until you’ve reached the core and their roots have now spread and tangled themselves with yours. The sad thing about Barcelona is that it is also a place of intermission, where people come to stay until they find where they truly need to be. Kai is moving away at the end of the month, a second friend I've rooted and then unrooted since I moved to Barcelona. So I am making the most out of our time together until the inevitable. Wishing that she finds all that her heart desires on her new journey.

R is for Recommending

For date night this week Tom and I went to a new Japanese Brunch - Norico. The food was beyond my expectations. We went there specifically, because Tom and I had passed it 2 weeks ago and it was packed with people. But we had never noticed it before, so we assumed it must be new (it was). Then as algorithms go, I saw an IG ad about a place that was giving a free glass of cava. It turned out to be the same restaurant. So we booked and had our date night there.

The menu is extensive and I was stressing for a bit because as a vegetarian (19 years and counting!) there aren't many fishes I like or allow myself to eat. This year, I have been slowly eating more and more fish because of the health and vitamin benefits, but I also truly am a picky eater when it comes to seafood. That said, I am proud to say I tried eel! Which really is a big one for me, and I don’t regret a single bite!

T is for Treating

Treating myself to long walks in the sunshine to soak up as much vitamin d the summer can bring. Sunday writing sessions at Balzac - this new boutique coffee opened up right around the corner of our house and it sends me back to Colonia Roma in Mexico City. I chatted up the owners, a Venezuelan family run business, he asked me where I was from and I said Mexico. He mentioned that so many Mexicans come here and say it feels like home. I told him it's exactly that. It doesn't feel like a coffee shop curated for instagram, but a place to be enriched through by time. And as time goes, I spent most of the weekend catching up with Tom as he's been traveling for work for most of the past 3 months. It hasn't been easy by any means and navigating a new obstacle in any relationship can always be tricky. But with time and commitment to open communication, it becomes a little easier.

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Until next week.

Warm hugs,

Ana

Since 2003, the Ayuntamiento de Barcelona (the local city government) introduced a plan to reintegrate the Peregrine Falcon into the city to manage Barcelona's growing pigeon population. From the beginning of March to late April, a livestream camera is accessible on YouTube to watch the mating and hatching process of the fastest animal on the planet.

Since March, I have been watching this livestream like my own religion, checking in on them first thing in the morning, after lunch, and before bed, like a prayer.

I've always been fascinated by nature. The Discovery and Animal Channels were my weekend stimulus as a child. Wavering from grade to grade, answering the question of "what do you want to be when you grow up?" always resulted in some form of answer like "a veterinarian, zoologist, paleontologist, marine biologist"—the list goes on.

But like most people, I never came close to any of those things. I studied International Relations, only to then do a 180 and get a postgraduate degree in Graphic Design. And to be completely frank, I truly feel that my destiny is to be a writer. Wherever my life has led me, my childish wonder into the intimate, everyday lives of animals persists.

So day by day, and week by week, I had a front-row ticket to an event only 18 other people were watching. It was like having our own parasocial club, growing an irrational attachment to four unhatched eggs with each passing day.

Waiting patiently for the day I would arrive at work, switch my laptop on, refresh the livestream, and see the eggs cracked open with hatchlings inside. Then one day it came; there it was—the first hatchling: a small pink ball of fuzzy, white, wet fluff. I marveled as the adult falcons took turns to hunt and switch shifts between guardian and hunter. The next day, another chick. Three more days passed, and there was no sign of the remaining eggs hatching. Worry grew inside me. What could be wrong? Were they getting enough heat from the parents? After three days, a third hatchling could be seen. However, it remained still all day.

I motioned to my coworker David, "Look! Do you think it's alive?" "It must be sleeping," he muttered. But the chicks don't sleep that long, not when the mother brings them food, at least. All day I kept panning from my work screen to the hatchling screen.

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Then, from the corner of my eye, I saw a small wooden door unlatch and a human hand reach into the nest. It removed with steadiness and not necessarily any tenderness the dead chick that had been lying in the corner since dawn. Only a few seconds passed as the door reopened, and again, the same hand with the same calculated movement, removed the unhatched egg. Then, stillness. The two remaining chicks had no awareness of the reality that had just been erased from their lives. I stared at the clock on my screen; only 2 minutes passed until the mother falcon returned to her nest with food in its beak, ready to be partitioned to its hatchlings. I don't speak falcon, but there was no pause in her demeanor, no sense of loss or stress for the two unfortunate chicks that stood no chance. She had a job, a natural instinct instilled within her for thousands of years: to feed her live chicks and hunt for their growth, their survival. It was pure primal.

I read that even falcons stop feeding their chicks if they notice an anomaly. Tears welled in the corners of my eyes.

I am not primal. I am not mother.

But I am human.

That event perplexed me so, as if I had just witnessed something I shouldn't have, a glitch in the matrix, and I thought:

Is this not God? Is this not what divine intervention looks like?

A hand reaching out from the corners of our lives to remove all the things that do not serve us, to remove that which has no further purpose, no further life in that which is our own. A steady hand that empties a battlefield, stitches up our wounds, gives up their seat on the metro, gives you an extra 5 euros in your back pocket, brings people into your life like tidal waves, and with such steadiness and not much tenderness, removes the ones that have met their purpose.

It's been weeks since I started to watch the journey of the Peregrine Falcon perched atop the Sagrada Familia. I've watched the mother and smaller father take turns warming up their eggs, switching sides over and over to get into the right spot. I've watched them leave the nest for no longer than 3 minutes in a synchronized shift change. I've watched the first hatchling come out of its shell, and then the second. I watched a buffet of different-sized and feathered prey be fed to the newborn falcons, peck by peck.

I watched the livestream religiously like a guardian angel, omnipresent, hoping for their survival, for their growth, and the inevitable first flight from their nest.

Does that mean my guardian angels are out there too? Watching me over a livestream, wishing me well-nourished and growing? Wishing for my overall survival? My thriving?

Do they coo when I ruffle my feathers? Sleep soundly through the night? Glimmer my eyes through the rays of the sun?

I hope so.

Two weeks later, I woke up to a third chick back again in its nest. Was it the unborn egg that was removed previously by the divine hand from the latched wooden door?

The falcons have grown; each day their fluff turns into feathers, each day the mother comes back with food. The older falcon siblings let the smaller falcon take the first bites.

Three weeks have passed since the third bird was introduced, and today it sits alone in its nest. Brother and sister have taken their flights; the species prevails; mother still brings it food. I cried again as I watched the lone falcon stare out into the sky, waiting for its turn to spread its wings and take its first flight. Knowing it almost didn't have a chance, I watched it practice flapping its wings over and over, hoping that one day I shall see it soar up above in the sky.

The falcon now watching me, without my knowledge, omnipresent, like a guardian angel, until it all repeats itself once again, like the circle that is life.

Waiting for that divine hand to intervene in silence, with swiftness, ensuring our paths into flight.

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R is for Reading

I’ve been struggling to get out of a reading rut and trying to finish La Verguenza by Annie Eraux. It’s a short book, but for some reason it has not latched on to me. It’s the second book I have read that won the Nobel Peace Prize for Literature by a female author. The first one I read was The Vegetarian by Han Kang, and that tbh I too struggled to grasp any enjoyment from it, unlike her other novel Greek Lessons, which I devoured and adored.

E is for Eating

My pen pal and now in-person friend Morgan, 1/4 of the Finds You Well gals, came to visit Barcelona and we dinned around the town all week. Showing her my daily life, routine and my fav spots for Catalan food and tapas was wholesome experience.

I also celebrated my 2 year anniversary with Tom. We finally got a reservation at the very well prized and reviewed Sartoria Panatieri. And celebrated birthdays around town with friends.

La Confitería and Can Kenji with Kai

Sartoria Panatieri with Tom

Can Paixano and Vermutería Puig Martí with Morgan

P is for Playing

I am really getting the groove back into Podcasts. I am also trying to continue to expand my knowledge on relationships and sex - as per my “How To Love Yourself” newsletter, I am still unravelling much of my past and my encounters with men and sex, so Esther Perel’s Podcast “Where Do We Begin?” is really helping me along that journey.

Throughout the week I also watched “Road Runner” a film about Anthony Bourdain. It was super enlightening and gives you a true glimpse into his life. If you haven’t watched his “Parts Unknown” series, I highly recommend doing so before watching the film. You can view it here on Youtube :)

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O is for Obsessing

I am really happy and proud that I have been consistently keeping up with my exercise goals!! What started out as a challenge to fix my chronic insomnia and give my life more balance and routine has turned into a healthy habit I genuinely never thought I would end up choosing, let alone actually loving. Concept Barre is my main place to be for Isometric Barre at 7AM!!! I can’t stress how hard that sentence would have been to write just 1 year ago.

R is for Recommending

My friend works at Life Drawing Barcelona where they host live drawing sessions that last around 2 hours. It’s a great experience if you want to get out of your comfort zone and also meet new people who - love to draw! The price is $10 euros and includes wine and a pica pica at the end. I went with my friend Melissa who did a promo video for them which you can check out here!

T is for Treating

I wrote on my 2025 Bingo card that I wanted to create a Kitchen Gallery wall! I have been procrastinating the endeavor. A couple of months ago we received some free frames from my boyfriend’s job, and they have just been sitting in a cupboard. This weekend though I got the bug. The move the furniture around and around, redecorate and give some love to our home bug. I went through my water color sketches and picked out the ones I liked. Alas, I framed 3 pictures, nailed the frames to the wall in under 10 minutes, and I can’t believe how and why I had procrastinated this so much. Because not only was it quick and easy, the small touches truly do bring the home together.

Until next week!

Warm hugs,

Ana

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I met Paul on my exchange program to Istanbul. I was twenty, about to turn twenty-one, and he had just turned twenty that summer. I was a virgin when I met him, and sex for him was one of his most treasured hobbies. Like most of my male encounters, I was on a mission to lose that title, to rid myself of the limitations the ‘holy virgin’ possessed over me. I had no tie to it. I just wanted to get rid of it with someone I felt comfortable with so I could further explore my sexuality, my impulses, without having to think about who would be the honorable man to dethrone my holy status.

Paul was not this man. But oh how I wished for him to be. The night I met Paul, he figuratively and literally swept me off my feet. We were bar hopping with the rest of the international exchange students — a way for us to bond over alcohol in a city where they blurred out the images of alcohol on TV. I approached him first. Bored by the lack of attention I was receiving from a Turkish guy I was into, I floated towards him. As I stood in front of him, my mind was fixed on the depth of his big blue eyes. I couldn’t recall a moment in my life where time had felt like it stopped just for me. All I did was say ‘hi’; that was enough for him to gleam and take hold of my hand, pull me up on a table to dance. That’s how I met Paul. Like a scene from a teenage rom-com film. I would later vehemently despise this fact: how lively meeting him was, how unconventional, overwhelming, and euphoric his presence would make a dent in my heart for almost a decade.

Our first conversation was in the back of a taxi. As Istanbul nights would have it, it was another late night, at another dingy bar somewhere along Istiklal Street. Enthralled by the conversation, we got separated from the crowd, our eyes so fixated on each other that we never even noticed where or when the group had turned left. We turned right, and he hailed a cab to take us back to campus. I’m not sure how the conversation steered into my sex life, but there I was telling him about my virginal status. He thought it was strange. His Englishness lost it much earlier. Too early in my eyes. Our cultural differences created many barriers and cemented many walls between us like this. He was promiscuous, and as a man, was not only proud of it, but was also allowed to be, pinning his conquests to his chest like a medal. I wanted the same adventures in all the senses of the word, but I hated the promiscuous label shadowing over me, the slight digs of slut-shaming that I would endure years after this friendship. Of course, I would bury it deep with all my other secrets, never confront my sex life and mistakes being the butt of the joke.

Nevertheless, we became friends — he became my best friend. After an awkward, date-like night (the label around it is still blurry), he took me out to dinner for my birthday. As conversation flowed, he mentioned something about feelings. I shot him down, like a fool afraid of vulnerability. I told him how I knew this wasn't a date, because it was him and us. I regret it so much. The look on his face of disappointment. Embarrassment. Only months later would our friend Ben confirm it was most definitely a date. Ben ended up joining us after dinner that night to go clubbing. As the tale goes, the two friends with blurry feelings for one another, their backs together on a dirty dance floor, kissed not each other, but random strangers that night.

We were inseparable after this: our morning breakfasts on campus, our library time in between classes, dinner and drinks and all. We became so close that everyone else thought we were a couple even though we weren't. But I guess when you see two people strolling around hand in hand, you might get that impression. My time in Istanbul was cut short. I was supposed to stay two semesters but ended up staying just one. I spent my last night sleeping in his bed. I thought that was the night I was finally going to lose my virginity. If not for both our awkwardnesses that stood in the way, I think he might have been the one. Looking back on it though, I’m relieved we didn’t. I’m relieved we were spared that memory of each other, that experience. I don't think our friendship would have lasted as long as it did if that were the case. I don’t think my mental health could have handled it. I could barely handle the fact that I didn’t know if I loved him or not, let alone know the carnal image of our bodies intertwined. I wanted more than him in every aspect of our companionship.

In the darkest part of the night, just before dawn, he hauled my luggage up to Istiklal Street. The flickers of stars reflected by the rising rays of the sun cast out memory after memory of all the silent glances, the cheeky smiles we’d taken on that street. We hugged goodbye before he put me on a bus to the airport. A lump in my throat weighed heavy on me, but he did not see me shed a tear. Only on the bus did I weep and weep and weep. The crescent moon was the only witness to my pain.

It took us three years to reunite afterwards. Our friendship still carried on within those years. Sometimes it would be stronger. It was only when he was dating someone new or in an actual relationship that our texts would grow sparse with time. He never shared these experiences with me. He could tell me his deepest secrets and intimate thoughts, but he never would speak of his relationships. I would never even know their names. He only ever referred to them as ‘the girlfriend’. I never understood why. But in hindsight, I’m happy about this. Happy I never had to put a name or face to the person filling in a spot in his life I so envied to be promoted to.

In 2019, we met again in Barcelona on a trip I was taking with my brother to gain Spanish citizenship. I paid for his plane ticket from England to Spain. I also paid for the Airbnb. After three years, I didn’t want money to be an obstacle for seeing each other. I was also very much desperate for answers. I yearned to know where our friendship stood. The past year had been riddled with texts that blurred the lines of any kind of friendship. A closeness fueled with too much sexual tension and frivolity for us to just be friends. Photos shared that left little to the imagination. Not nudes in the erotic sense of it, but the comfortability and vulnerability that is sharing your bare skin to someone, baring your soul to someone, with no embarrassment that lingers with the act. Friends don’t do this. Do they?

I had asked friend Lena to take photos of me with my Polaroid camera. I was in black lace lingerie panties and no top. I don’t know how to explain this sensation to a person unless they went through it: the comfortability of being naked and being good in one’s own body after years of eating disorders, and hiding my stomach in between my arms as I ran quickly out of a pool to get a towel. I was now 22 and confident in my body. I wanted it to be shared, and he was the only person to have ever made me comfortable enough in my skin to share my body with.

The thing about the photograph is, it was never meant to be overtly sexual. I was radiant in the photo, almost childlike in my enthusiasm of being naked and carefree. I slipped the Polaroid inside a notebook I had handmade for him for his birthday. Wrapped it up nicely and took it with me to Barcelona.

Seeing him in person felt like no time had passed. We were older, in a new city, but everything was the same. Our friend Alex also came on the trip. Our friend group was almost complete. I was reliving a part of my past as a newly found woman with radiating confidence on the outside. On the inside, I was an anxious mess induced by a sociopathic boss waiting back home for my arrival. But I never told them this on the trip. Not even when I woke up throwing up first thing in the morning. If they noticed, I didn’t. And neither of them would dare to pry.

Regardless, the trip went like I imagined. There we were strolling out to bars again. Arm in arm, then hand in hand. But after three days, nothing happened. I had no answers, just more confusion. We never kissed; we never talked about feelings. He also never mentioned he had been dating his now-girlfriend of six years. As I presented him with his present, as he cheekily chuckled at the Polaroid, “wow, so many presents,” he giggled. He never mentioned her.

Today, I use this bit of information as my armor.

Because three years later when he moved in with Emma, he stopped talking to me. Eight months I was put through hell. I sobbed most nights, not just about Paul and my denial of my feelings for him, but the fact that my life was unraveling before me. I was emotionally and physically exhausted. But within those eight months, I was able to heal parts of me buried deep since I was a little girl. I accepted the fact that I was in love with Paul, and grieved that the man I was in love with was made up all by myself, cradled comfortably in my head, keeping warm within my heart. The true Paul was cold. Had always been. The real Paul strung me around for emotional support year after year, breakup after breakup.

The real Paul chose to cut me off with silence, because his girlfriend found the Polaroid inside his handmade notebook I gave him three years earlier. I was made out to be the homewrecker, the villain in a story I had no clue had ever unraveled. I had no idea that I had lost my closest friend due to some silly picture taken when I thought he was single. A photograph he happily accepted knowing he was already dating. Knowing he had already cheated on her with women, women that were and would never be me.

It makes me sad that I hurt a woman I had no intentions of hurting, I had no intentions of messing up her life. Because if I would have known back then that they were already together, I would have never given him that photograph. My name is tainted because he is a coward. My name is tainted because I was silly enough to think a boy deserved a photo in one of my most vulnerable and proud moments when he barely even deserved my friendship. But I didn't know this back then. I do know this now.

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In October of 2022, I finally moved to Barcelona. We hadn’t talked since April. I spent my summer packing. Dealing with another friendship breakup, this time it was Lena. In the truest sense, I packed up everything that was necessary and essential to my being. I fit my life into four containers. I left my plants and cat with my brother. I took two suitcases with me on this new adventure. I left behind everything that unfortunately, despite the pain and tears, did not suit me any longer. Had not given me anything for a while, but had only taken bits. That was Paul, and then Lena. In one summer, I had gained an entire new life. Pursuing a dream I had long thought was impossible, I changed careers and went to study Graphic Design in Barcelona, while two of the closest people I had stayed in the past.

I’m not sure if it was the city, the people, or the fact that I simply had nothing to lose anymore. After losing two best friends in the same year, knowing that I hadn't spoken my truth, felt walked all over. Knowing that I had given my heart, time, and soul to people who had long lost the desire to keep it, to make an effort to reciprocate it.

I messaged Paul after my birthday. It had been a month already since I had moved, and he never even reached out. So I did. That’s when he nonchalantly told me I had been “persona non grata” for a while in his household. He told me about Emma and the Polaroid. I was shocked and embarrassed. But there was something about how he told me the story that I couldn't grasp at the moment. He had found it all to be funny, like the last nine months had been nothing to him. Whilst I was torturing myself about what I had done, there he was smiling about the little incident. He said the waters are calmer now, we can go back to doing the magazine I started that he loved taking credit for.

I didn’t sleep that night. I hung up the phone and I cried myself to sleep. But that was the last fucking time I ever shed a tear for Paul. He has squeezed out every last drop out of me. I had nothing more left for him, except for contempt. I was done. The mask had fallen. There and then I saw the real Paul. The Paul that always was, that I painted over with my own version of him. But unlike my friendship with Lena, I wasn’t going to stay quiet this time. For the first time in months, I felt rage towards him, all the rage I had felt towards myself shifted onto him. So I drafted him a bible of a message. I had never been comfortable with confrontation, ever the people pleaser, but something within me finally clicked. I had been so broken that all the pieces had fallen into themselves like puzzle pieces. I was finally going to stand up for myself like I had never before. I told him EVERYTHING. Everything I had felt for the past seven years laid out neatly by bullet points and paragraphs on Facebook Messenger. In less than a minute, he opened the message, and in less than a minute, an almost decade-long friendship was over. He never replied. He would never reply. I knew this before pressing send. He was too much of a coward to say anything, that or he genuinely did not give a flying fuck.

It took me seven years to come to terms with my feelings for Paul, but it took less than a minute to feel so utterly fuck-free. I was euphoric. I had unbound myself. I had shattered the perfect image of him I had constrained in my mind all that time. Most importantly, I had finally stood up for myself for once. I was 26 years old. Finally speaking my mind, taking a stance, setting a boundary that should have been set years ago. I had suffered so much for someone who had never even shuddered a thought about me. My smile streaked across my face. I left Paul in my past and walked away with the little dignity he’d left me with, but I fucking walked. My head held high, conscience cleared, and proud of myself.

Paul taught me one of the biggest lessons of my twenties. He embodied the righteous wrath of not speaking your truth, of staying silent when all you want to do is scream. Paul embodied death and rebirth and everything in between. He was the symbol of what man should be, at least to me. And therein lies my fault. The idealization of man. The idealization of anyone for that matter. People inevitably and inherently grow. Either together or apart, regardless, they change. Evolve.

I gave everything to a person who only ever gave me crumbs. I collected each one with the hopes of one day building a beautiful cake. But for all the crumbs one can collect, the cake you so imagined with rich ingredients, time dedicated to its making, the delicate decorations to embellish it, will never be. It is insane to try and make a cake out of crumbs. For as big of a mountain you can collect, it will never be the beautiful cake you concocted in your head.

The idealization of a person is harmful to both you and said person. It is unfair to put someone on a pedestal and hold them to the highest of standards — standards you set for them — without them ever showing you they had the capabilities or met the qualifications of meeting them. In essence, you are setting the person up for failure. You are setting yourself up for disappointment. For pain.

Paul never wanted to be in my life the way I wanted him to. I did the work for both of us. Always texting, always calling, making sure the memory of me stayed vivid in his mind. Seven years of a one-sided friendship. I wish I could take back the time and the tears. If someone does not want to be in your life, plain and simple, let them. Let them go. The sooner, the better. Don’t hold out on a thought, an idea, a potential ‘what if’.

The sad realization that many of us have at the early stages of our adulthoods is that no one teaches you how to navigate friendships throughout our twenties. No one prepares you for the moment you realize the person you’ve known for a decade or more no longer serves a purpose in your life. No longer ignites your curiosity, your passions, your dreams. Even if we can intuit that the end is near, do not drag it on for seven years, for a decade longer. Speak your truth.

I silenced my feelings; I silenced myself in the fear of losing a friend. I wish I would have had the courage to tell Paul how I felt when we were still back in Istanbul, when we’d roam about, hands interlaced. I wish I would have been bolder. To dare myself to confront the fear of falling in love. The fear of being rejected. The fear and messiness of it all. I wish I would have honored my feelings, my emotions. They were present after all, and therefore worthy to be addressed. Worthy to have been spoken and heard.

I’ve learned that if my feelings and emotions are what causes a friendship to crumble, then you are not meant to be in each other’s lives in the first place. Not meant to be friends, and certainly not meant to be lovers. Most of all, they are not meant to be prized with the title of ‘best friend’.

When I think about love or the feeling love should bring, I imagine it to be a feeling of happiness and wonder. When I think about Paul, I feel the strings of a sad song play. I hear a symphony of pianos pace to a melancholic tune. I don't know if I ever truly loved Paul. Or if I wanted to prove myself worthy of the image I construed of him in my brain. But the thought of him doesn’t make me happy. It makes me truly sad. Can love be sad? Perhaps I did love him, even when he gave me nothing.

To this day, I hate to admit it, but I do miss him. I miss him terribly. I miss his cheeky wit. His deep chuckle. I miss making him laugh, the validation it gave me. I miss the comfortable silence in our phone calls. I miss him until I remember all we were in the end was polite company.

I wasn’t planning on sleeping with my friends’ roommate. It’s one of those things that you just don’t do. Or at least I don't. But on the morning of New Year's Day, there I was naked -tits out and all- in Brody’s bed. Oops.

I was completely wide awake. Sleep had never entered my body. I was mortified by several facts. One, that Alex was not going to ever let me forget this. Two, we’d had sex without a condom. Another thing that, personally, I just don’t do. What a way to ring in the New Year! Already trying new things way out of my comfort zone.

So what led me to make this decision? Was it that we’d spent the night talking on the couch until 6 AM? Was it that I found it cute how nervous Brody was around me? Was it mostly the Pornstar Martinis and Prosecco dancing in my stomach? Most definitely. Or was it that Alex had mentioned before I met Brody that he’d seen a picture of me and said he wanted to sleep with me?

I really don’t know which answer has more weight to it. Or which answer is more pathetic than the other: that I got drunk and was an easy lay, even if soberly I would not have done it, or that the idea that someone desired me had convinced me to go against everything I wanted to stop doing, which was sleeping with guys I’d just met. I have to admit, the sheer fact of knowing that I was wanted was my kryptonite. Sleeping with someone who just wanted my body, who only wanted to tick a box off his checklist of ethnicities he wanted to bang, was an easy price to pay for the idea that his desire might turn into love.

Brody is a Soft Boy. Plain and simple. He’s the type of guy that is sensitive, that says he loves monogamy, and understands the complexities of patriarchy and how it impacts women. Soft Boys are much more dangerous than your average fuck boy, because they have that layer of sensitivity, of emotional awareness. I was seduced by Brody’s enthusiasm about his job. A social worker, helping kids and families. Fuck me. A guy that had spent years abroad teaching English. Fuck me. A guy who repeatedly showed his love and affection for one of his best friends, who also happened to be one of my best friends. Fuck me.

Yet the signs were clearly all there. “His Hinge profile is set to only Latinas and Asians,” Alex confided to me. “Brody, tell Ana why you want more straight friends,” Alex had mentioned. “I’m not going to have sex anymore without a condom,” I told Brody after the fact. “But you're so wet,” he repeatedly mentioned. Soft boys are worse than fuck boys. Fuck boys don’t try to get to know you. Fuck boys don’t explain to you their feelings and thought process when trying to make a move. Fuck boys don’t tell you how amazing and interesting they think you are.

At 6 AM, after a very, very long conversation, we both called it a night. Said it was time to go to bed. I went upstairs to Alex’s room. He was nice enough to give me his entire bedroom while staying with him in London. I realized I’d left my bag downstairs on the couch, so I went back down. Brody was brushing his teeth in the bathroom. I did the same. My bare feet cooled by the floor tiles. We both stood awkwardly cramped inside the bathroom, consumed by the silence and intimacy that is oral hygiene. There was something stirring in his mind, I could see it in his eyes.

“I want to tell you something, but I don’t know how you’ll take it,” he said.

“What do you mean?” I replied. I was genuinely intrigued by where this conversation was heading.

“If I tell you I’m just afraid that you’ll think I didn't appreciate the entire night and the conversation that we had. I don’t want you to think that I didn’t enjoy our talk,” he said this in a quiet, soft voice. His eyes averted mine. I didn’t take mine off him.

“I’m confused, I’m not sure I understand what you're trying to say.” I played dumb. I knew exactly where this conversation was headed and what he was trying to imply. I just had never been in a situation where a guy was trying to express verbatim his thought process of how to politely tell me he was attracted to me. Or more explicitly, and matter-of-factly, how to politely tell me he wanted to fuck me.

I thought this gesture was quite wholesome. I stupidly also thought it to be genuine. Perhaps it was, or perhaps it was another Soft Boy maneuver. Well played, Brody. I was enthralled. Here I thought I had him in the palm of my hand, watching cutely how he tried to express his emotions. Yet, it was a completely different story. It was him that had me in the palm of his hand. Checkmate.

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The conversation moved from the bathroom to the bottom of the stairs. I was about to go back up. He was still explaining his thought process to me. He said point blank, “I didn’t want to try and kiss you, because I didn’t want you to think that’s all I wanted. And now I don’t know if I should still try to, because I’m not sure how you’ll react.” I was standing right in front of him. I just looked at his eyes, and said nothing, hoping they’d confirm the answer he was searching for. “So I guess I’m just going to go for it,” he said after a beat.

He leaned in closer. I leaned in closer. His hands grabbed my face softly. They were warm. Secure. At last our lips met. And met, and met, and met once again.

Then we heard the door. Alex was coming downstairs. We separated from each other like teenagers caught by their parents. Brody and I glanced at each other, both mortified and also trying not to burst out laughing. Alex pounded down the stairs with a look that would make any person want to avoid his peripheral view.

Alex, with his stomach issues, could barely sleep. He was refilling a heat pouch he had. Brody and I just stood there and stared at him, making it even more obvious that we’d been caught. Alex looked back at us: “Are you just going to stand there and stare at me?!” He was reasonably cranky. We both looked at each other, dying from the awkwardness, and sat back down on the couch.

“Alex, do you need some medicine?” Brody mentioned.

“Is your stomach acting up?” I meekly squeaked.

“No, I’m fine,” Alex responded. Clearly not fine at all. We watched him pound back up the stairs. When we were alone again, we just stared at each other. A small smile turned into a huge grin. We giggled. Our glances understood how comical the whole situation was. He crept closer, inching his body back towards mine. Our lips met again.

“You know we can move this to my bedroom,” he said.

I didn’t reply. I just stood up, grabbed his hand and walked towards his door.

Inside, he turned the light on. I observed his curated surroundings. I judged the environment he had manufactured for himself. It was messy, but not too messy. I immediately gravitated towards his bookshelf. Kafka, Atwood, Camus, Huxley. We’d definitely get along. He likes dystopian fiction. Fuck me, pretty please. As if he’d read my thoughts, he moved toward me. Took in my waist. We started kissing again. Softly at first, then gaining momentum. He felt safe. Brody felt like a nostalgic memory. Like I'd already walked around barefoot in his thoughts, had already tasted his surroundings, was already familiarized with the terrain of his face, his chest, his soul.

My hands glided deep through his hair, pressing his face closer to mine. Our kisses became deeper with every gap of space we closed with our bodies. We were on the bed now. His clothes came off. My clothes came off. And then the Soft Boy in him came to the forefront. As we were naked, he became more aggressive. Grabbed my neck, pulled my hair. I saw a man flicker into an animal with the widening of his pupils. There it was. Man at his finest. Lusting, aggressive, and violent.

Earlier that night we had been talking about sex and past partners, all three of us. I’d mentioned that I despised being a fetish to men. My Latina identity being fetishized. Preyed upon. I told both Brody and Alex how annoying it was to be with someone and be expected to act like a caricature, a trope. Expected to be fiery and sassy. To be aggressive and hot in bed. No emotions, just the animalistic act of fucking. “Men are trash,” I said to them. They didn’t disagree.

As Brody reached to grab and pull me, disappointment loomed within me. Did I think, because he was friends with Alex, he’d be different? Did I think, because he showed a certain sensitivity, he would respect me? At that moment I figured it all out. All the little details and information given to me during the night came into fruition. Brody, the Soft Boy. Brody, the guy whose ex was from Colombia and deemed “toxic.” Brody, the guy who had his Hinge preferences set to a specific ethnicity of women. Brody, the guy who forgot to mention he had been dating a girl named Joy for the past 4 months. But he did remember to ask me when the last time I had been tested was.

“2 months ago, and you?” I asked.

“Yeah, also about 2 months ago,” he replied back as he was already deep inside me.

Having almost a girlfriend, a very frequent sex partner, would have been crucial information to have in order to make an informed decision about whether or not to have sex with him. Whether or not to have unprotected sex with him. Soft boys. Fuck boys. Boys. Disappointed but not surprised. Disappointed by the fact I found out only after the sex that he was regularly seeing someone.

“He has a girlfriend, you know!” Alex said when I told him about what happened the next morning. He obviously knew we had had sex. I was mortified by the fact of waking up in the morning and bumping into him. It was too early to face his wrath.

As we walked along the Banking District in London on New Year’s Day, no soul in sight. The perks of walking around London on the first day of the year, Alex had pointed out.

“What do you mean he has a girlfriend?!” I yelled back.

“Well, he’s literally been going on dates almost every week with the same girl for the past 4 months.” My stomach dropped. My ears became hot. I was both angry and confused.

“I mean, neither of them want to put a label on it,” Alex said. “But he was literally complaining how she hadn’t texted him back yesterday at midnight,” he added.

Fuck that. Fuck this. Fuck men. Fuck him. We dropped the conversation. I didn’t want to spoil my outing with this shit. I didn’t want to start the first day of the new year worrying about what I had done, with whom I had done it. I didn’t want the shame to seep in. I didn’t want my conscience to grind its gears overthinking and over-analyzing every detail of the past 24 hours. I didn’t want to get overwhelmed by the fact that we didn’t use a condom, that although he never came inside me, because he was “too drunk to finish,” I could still get pregnant. I could still get an STI. Happy New Year to me. FUUUUCK!

We walked around London mostly in silence. It was like this with Alex and I. We only talked when necessary. It’s rare to find someone, anyone, where silence is comforting. Where silence is allowed. After walking for several hours, we went back home when the sun hid, which in January in London was around 4 PM. When I first arrived in London, this fact shocked me. It made me feel like the day was cut too short. That by sundown I should already be getting ready to sleep even though it was still the middle of the day. However, on this particular day I was kind of relieved by the sudden lack of light. It meant that sooner I would be seeing Brody again. I would be able to talk to him about last night and just talk to him in general. I was looking forward to it. Despite all the evidence, despite my anger, there I was heart-in-chest-pumping hoping to see him.

When we arrived back at Alex's place, I saw the light from Brody’s room turned on. Good, he was home and most importantly awake. There was a sense of calm in me. Until that is, when we stepped inside the house. Brody immediately came out of his bedroom. Was he also as eager to see me? Yet, dread seeped in. His gaze was on the floor, or on the wall, or on Alex. But never on me. We awkwardly danced around each other's eyes, trying not to catch one another. Alex’s presence made it all more difficult, all more a big deal.

When Alex saw Brody, the first thing he said was, “So have you had sex with any other of my friends, Brody?” It was a good joke.

“Nope, just the one,” Brody replied as he shifted farther away from me as possible.

“Just the one,” I mimicked back. Oh God, fuck me. It really wasn’t a big deal, I kept on convincing myself.

“I’m heading out,” Brody said.

Out? Out where? And so soon? We literally had just walked in through the door.

“I’m going to go get some food and come back,” he said.

Okay, that didn’t seem that bad. It didn't seem like it would take a long time at least. He put on his shoes and left. I stayed on the couch reading my book.

Grabbing food indeed didn’t take him long. In about 15 minutes he was back home. But still he very much avoided both my eyes and what felt like my existence in general. He ate his noodles at the kitchen table while Alex and I sat on the couch in the living room. It was a small space, so conversation still ensued. Brody repeated again, once he’d finished his meal, that he was going out.

Are you kidding me? I thought. This guy is making me feel like he is trying to run away from me. I’m sure he has a life and all, good for him. But less than 6 hours ago I was lying naked in his bed. Is it too much to ask to have a conversation? To not feel so used and discarded? Was he going out to see Joy? The audacity.

Alex had the same idea in his head. He asked him, probed him really. He was going to Hackney to meet a friend and his girlfriend. It would be an early night, he said. Probably a lie. I’m not sure if he felt the need to say this in order to make me feel better. Or to make himself feel better. Maybe he sensed my disappointment when he said he was going out. Or better, maybe he sensed my judgment. However, since he wasn’t there the next morning, I’m sure it was just a lie. Or maybe he did meet his friends and met up with Joy afterwards. I don’t know. Different scenarios played out in my head. Neither of which made me feel any better though.

How would he explain the scratches I left on him? I thought. Karmic relief, that made me feel a little better I’m guilty to admit. Before he left the second time, he turned toward me. This was the first time he’d looked at me since last night. Properly looked at me.

“At what time are you leaving tomorrow?” he asked me.

“My flight leaves at 3 PM,” I said unemotionally.

“So, I guess I’ll see you both in the morning?” His eyes shifted from mine to Alex’s, waiting for a response.

“Sure,” Alex and I said in uncanny unison.

He was on his way out with his shoes, coat on and all, but he kept lingering on a bit. Please stay, I will. Please just stay. Don’t make me feel like they all do, please. Don’t make me feel like a fucking object. Not you, Brody. He left shortly after.

“Well, I really gotta go. Bye guys.”

“Ciao,” I said softly.

Ciao? Ugh. Fuck me.

Once he left, Alex and I talked about it. I was very honest with him. I told him I'd felt deceived. Sure, he seems like a nice guy, a good friend. But I would have never slept with him knowing about the other girl. “Men are trash,” we agreed.

Alex went to bed early. I stayed up a little bit longer. Hoping to catch him alone, to talk about what had happened.

“Are you going to wait for him?” Alex joked.

“Of course not, I just want to finish my book.” Neither of us believed me.

So I stayed up for 2 more hours, until my eyes couldn’t handle it anymore. “What the fuck are you doing?” I told myself. “Are you really giving up sleep for some random guy?” No, not again. Never again. Enough. I am better than this. I am worthy of so much more. So, I went to bed.

The next morning I was getting on a plane to leave. Alex and I went for a last stroll. I noticed the first thing when I went down for breakfast that Brody’s shoes weren’t in the entryway. Maybe he’s gotten home too drunk, or too late, or both, and he just went inside his room and left them there? Or maybe he didn't come home at all? No noise came from his room. No vape on the coffee table to announce a sign of his presence.

So I left with all my things. I left without saying goodbye to Brody. Left without being able to express anything about the night before. Left feeling objectified once again by someone who didn’t deserve me in the first place, yet desperately wanted him to want me. To want me in every other way a person wants someone. Not just a physical want.

For a moment, I thought you’d seen me, Brody. All of me. Not just my body. Until you had me, and then you disappeared. You avoided me.

So, I did what I always do. I cursed men and I boarded my plane. Flew back to Barcelona, back to my reality. I thought that would be the end until you DMed me the next day.

Brody: Hey hey! I was sorry to have missed you the other morning! Hope your journey back to Barca was chill.

Brody: I didn't get a chance to acknowledge it the other morning but wanted to say how great it was to meet you and spend New Year's with you.

Brody: Wishing you an excellent 2023 and very much looking forward to your next trip to London.

Me: Hey Brody

Me: Thank you and likewise, it was lovely to meet you too.

Me: Hope 2023 brings you all that you wish for.

What I really wish I would have told him was, what the fuck? Or at least more politely:

Me: I wish you would have told me about Joy. I wouldn’t have slept with you if I knew you were seeing someone. I think I deserved to have that information. I really thought that from our conversation you’d be different. You’d be decent. But I feel deceived into sleeping with you. Have a happy new year, Brody.

But I didn’t say that. I didn’t speak my truth and didn’t tell him off. Instead, I DMed him a couple of days later with a photo I took of all three of us.

Brody: Wow, what a great photo!

Brody: Thank you for capturing this moment really.

Cringe. That was all he said before leaving me on read.

Soft Boys…

It didn’t take long before Alex texted me.

Alex: So you’re texting Brody now?

Me: Lol, if texting means being left on read then no, we’re not texting.

Alex: Just thought he’d want the picture of you two.

I mean, that’s not not true… with a little hidden agenda but not untrue.

Alex: Unfortunately he did.

Alex: I wouldn't expect much of a response - very much like Jonas in that respect.

Alex: That and the fact he’s all in on Joy 💩 Men are trash.

Me: That’s funny because he was all ‘in’ me just two days ago.

I didn’t actually say that but I might as well have. I think Alex would have appreciated it. All I replied to was “couldn’t agree more”.

Men are trash, and at this age I’m not sure why I’m still shocked when a guy acts like a guy. And Soft Boys are the worst type of them. What gives me rage is the fact that a person could be so nonchalant about the whole ordeal. You fuck me. Then you fuck someone else. Then you avoid me. Then you text me?!

You text me without a thought in the world of how I might have felt about the entire situation. Because I am positive that Alex told you I knew about Joy. He wouldn’t give up the opportunity to put you in an uncomfortable position, it’s just too good. My rage is also towards myself, that I acted so placid. That I didn’t tell him off like I thought of. That I still wanted him somehow to like me, or want to know me. I’m more upset about the people-pleaser that texted him back. Because, his obliviousness is to be expected. Mine, though… mine is curated. Curated to appease men, to make sure their feelings don’t get hurt. To make sure they still think of me fondly. A good fuck. To make sure that they still think of me at all.

The toxic Scorpio in me only hopes that when he closes his eyes while he’s fucking someone else that he thinks of me. Not because I want him to desire me. Because I want to haunt him. I want my presence to overbear him, even in his most intimate moments. Just like he’ll haunt me. It’s only fair I think.

Serendipity struck once.

I met him on Tinder. Out of all the dating apps, I think Tinder is the grossest. Don’t ask me why, but from personal experience people on Tinder are mostly only looking to hookup. What was I doing there? I’m not really sure. But at this point, I had tried Tinder, Bumble, Raya, and—alas—Hinge. Out of all the men I’ve met there I can truly attest that Tinder has curated the lowest of the low of men in my dating experience. I thought this had changed when I matched with Rory.

His profile was curated with well-lit photos, from family vacations and wholesome time spent with friends. The bio read that he was a PHD student studying poverty. As an International relations major this was HOT. Not only because he cared as much for education as I did, but it was a tell that we’d at least have a common interest in conversation topics. So I swiped.

An instant match. And as instant as the match, a dumb smile spread across my face. Instant validation was the gratification of knowing the guy I thought was interesting had interest in me as well.

I hate to admit that the addictive nature of dating apps for me stemmed from this very need of validation. Validation of hot guys on the internet. A type of validation I sought and lacked most throughout my pre-pubescent and adolescent life. A validation that as a late bloomer boosted my confidence and filled a hole within me that yearned to be needed, yearned to prove to people I was lovable, easy even, to love. YOU WANT ME! my heart screams with each swiping match. I’M DESIRABLE! Swipe, match. I’M LOVABLE! Swipe, match. I’M FUCKABLE! Swipe, match. I’M HOT! Swipe, match.

Within minutes we started talking. Let me tell you—it was a great fucking conversation. The kind where there is mutual interest in asking questions about the person, met with paragraphs and paragraphs of us answering them. We talked for two days straight, until the third day he was suddenly not there. His profile had disappeared from the app. What the hell? I was sad. The prospects of meeting him in real life had given me hope, not just of the potential romance, but because I thought if anything we would genuinely hit it off as friends.

Then Serendipity struck twice.

A week later, there he was again on the app. Lol. I thought to myself. So I swiped again just for the shits and giggles. To my surprise, we matched again. I messaged him with something along the lines of deja-vu. He didn’t get it. Instead he instantly said hi and asked for my number.

My first warning should have been the spontaneous disappearance. My second warning should have been that in the week and a half since he randomly fell out of the Tinder sphere, he had no recollection of having a conversation with me. Not only that but he was genuinely certain he had already matched with me in the summer! It was mid January. How many women must you be talking to in order to completely fumble a conversation from a week ago? As someone with shit memory, I can attest that I at least have never forgotten a face that I’ve matched with. Perhaps because as women we are more selective in our swiping so there are less faces to remember. But trying to convince me I was surely wrong was baffling. Not only was he wrong, he was SO wrong it was laughable. I moved to the city in October. This summer I was still living in back home. So it wasn’t even remotely plausible.

We laughed it off as a fluke. I played dumb and said who knows. I knew.

He seemed smart and really good looking, so naturally I ignored all the signs.

We set up a date. Or more like he mentioned if I would like to get drinks on Saturday, and when Saturday came and I hadn’t heard from him I texted him to say if it was still on. He was somewhere in the Pyrenees skiing. It was a last minute thing. But he assured me he’d still be up for seeing me later that night. Cool, I said. Not really reassured, but I was bored and had nothing else to do that night. I was out on a hike for the afternoon by myself. He kept sending me voice messages which I thought was bold. Unknown to him but an Irish accent was my kryptonite.

So I went with it.

We met at a restaurant on the usual street I always set up my dates to be at. It's a convenient 10 min walk from my place for a quick escape or midnight rendezvous. However, I forgot to make reservations and Irish boy number three didn’t suggest making any either. And like on any Thursday evening in Barcelona everything was packed and booked. Let's go to Blai, he says. I dreaded that name. That street. But after several months of not running into Irish boy number one I thought what were the odds? So we walked that way towards a street that always had something churning. He suggested a bar on the corner that was trendy enough and I was already going to go the next day. So I figured I might as well check it out beforehand. It too was severely packed. We spotted a table way in the back. The waiter stopped us from sitting down and said it was already reserved. Coincidentally it was reserved for Rory's friends. They asked him about his skiing earlier that day. He introduced me to them. I thought it was a good tell into his manners. The waiter interrupted their conversation and motions towards a free table that was now ours at the front. With all the commotion I lost him in the sea of tourists and taller things than me. Like the introduction of a character in a Wes Anderson film, the sea of people parted from my view. Perfectly aligned front and center for the next scene to take in. Rory sat down his back facing a wide window with red velvet curtains at the side. Sitting at a tiny European sized table. He looked up at me and smiled.

I looked back at him in terror.

Synchronicity had struck again.

This time it was a home run. Sitting next to him was none other than OG Irish boy himself, the toxic manipulator, the leave a condom inside you traitor. I prayed at that moment that the earth would open up and would swallow me whole.

The universe really can’t be out to get me, can it? I can't really think of my love life as comedic relief for others. But as I stood there on my first date with the guy I had already had a rocky start with, there he was chatting up the other Irish guy I had dated. My love life in that moment became a Greek Tragedy. It truly was the epitome of comedy.

I walked to the table hesitantly and had no other choice but to act like nothing was wrong with the scenario. I locked eyes with Jay’s roommate first, the gleam in his eyes told me he was ready for the all the awkwardness to come. As I sat down in front of Rory I leaned over to say cheerfully say “Hiii!”, to Jay and his roommate. They were both nice enough to ask me about the holiday’s, but Rory could see the dread in my eyes and the fake smile across my face.

“Do you need an exit plan?” He leaned over and whispered.

I cheekily nodded yes. As smooth as a motherfucker he turned oh so confidently to Jay and his roommate.

“Boys, we’re gonna go. I’m looking for a certain type of beer that they don’t have on the menu.”

“Oh what kind?” Jay asks.

And they both started mentioning ales, pales and lagers. None of which I understood. So he stands up, I follow suit, saying in the same cheery-but-kill-me “byeee!” And out the door we went.

I couldn't hold my laugh any longer and once we were out the door I burst and he joined in. It was the kind of awkward situations that make or break a night. The night had been made, and with it, the bed we would lie in afterward too.

Despite everything, It turned out to be an amazing first date. The conversation flowed naturally, and I felt like I had known him for a really long time, like we were just two old friends getting a drink and catching up on life after not seeing each other for a while.

He offered to walk me back home. That was my moment of truth, with my newly found confidence and high on all the synchronicities of the night I turned to him and said “are you expecting to come home with me”.

“I would never expect anything from you, but I would like to go home with you if that’s alright.”

We stared into each other's eyes. There it was, sparks. My stomach flipping on all sides like a chained monkey at a circus. A caged animal wanting to be set free.

The first time we tried having sex, the condom broke. What is it with Irish men and condoms? We tried a vegan condom my roommate had given me, the only thing left as a reminder from her past relationship. Not to hate on vegan condoms, but they were shit. They felt thick and rough inside me and in two thrusts the first one broke. In three thrusts the second one broke. Perhaps I should have taken that as an omen of what was to come for the following six months. Another synchronicity to add to the books for when I would write all this down for the sake of my sanity.

I knew Rory for roughly six months.

He was sadly the longest relationship with a romantic partner I have ever had. I say sadly because the only romantic thing he ever did was bring me croissants twice for breakfast when he was in town. We were fuck buddies, friends with benefits, a transactional relation. I wanted validation and company, he wanted sex. But not enough sex. My sex drive was much higher than his. I could fuck him every day morning and night. I was high on the fact that I was finally feeling sexually free, finally felt comfortable enough with a man, and was developing an emotional connection with a man that wasn’t rooted in just the sexual power of domination. Feeling validated because someone lusted over me. But the fact that regardless of sex, we could have been great friends, and that is a much greater validation than just plain sex.

I did feel awful at the beginning of the arrangement. It felt too transactional, come over, come in me, leave. But the idea of going back on dating apps and trying out what other men were out there was an even more horrifying feeling.

I would never admit it, even if my roommates hinted at it, that perhaps he could fall in love with me. Was I so delusional to believe intellectual, emotional and sexual connection could make a man fall in love with me? Encouraging him to settle down, to commit to me, with me.

The convenience and inconvenience of Rory was that he would only be in the city for two weeks every four weeks, meaning I saw him every other month. With his sister sick, the months lengthened. In total I only saw him physically for a total of 7 days in the span of 6 months.

Sure, we’d text everyday. I’d even lie and say I wasn’t sleepy to talk to him on his night shifts at the shelter he worked at. At times it felt like he’d reply to a totally different conversation. It took me another 3 months to realize that perhaps I wasn’t so far off after all.

Always trust your intuition.

I had already learnt this with Jay. Something about Rory was off. His texting was lagging. We had only had sex once since he had come back to the city in May. So one night I went to test my gut feeling. I re-downloaded tinder. And in 3 swipes there he was again. He'd changed his profile picture and his bio. Most daunting he had changed his profile to ‘open to explore’, which it used to be ‘not looking for anything serious’. I screenshot my phone and I sent the image to him with the caption “lol”.

When 5 minutes passed and he didn’t reply I called him and he answered (this I now understand to know is an impulse triggered by anxiety). He was at a bar with friends. I told him to look at his phone. He laughed, “don’t worry I’m not talking to anybody else” he reassured me, which we all know was not very reassuring.

After the phone call from the bar, we met up a couple days later to talk about what was going on. I told him I knew this wasn’t going anywhere but that there needed to be a clear line between us. I ended up deciding that it was just best to be friends. So we should meet up the following weekend and just chill. Except he was going to be out of town and would let me know. He didn’t. And instead of stressing and texting him about if and when we would hang out, I took a walk.

Serendipity and synchronicity. They were always on my side, always trying to show me the signs I ignored over and over again.

Until I asked for a clear sign—one I couldn’t ignore. They both replied with a slap in the face this time. I needed to take walk to clear my head. To write down all of what was stirring in a chaotic mix of what if’s and why did I let him.

It was the perfect spring to summer weather. I grabbed a gelato and walked to my favorite spot near the port. I journaled. I told the universe to let him be in my life if he needs to be, and let him leave if he’s not.

As I walked back home from my random stroll for gelato around the port, two blocks from my house, there he was, walking in my direction, phone in hand texting someone that was not me, that would never be me.

He froze in shock when he saw me. Like a child caught, he word-vomited straight away.

“I’m sorry I haven’t texted you back… I know I haven’t texted you back when I said I would.”

“Oh, I just thought you were camping with your friends.” I replied nonchalantly, masking the deep disappointment inside me with all the willpower I had left. He didn’t go camping after all. He was in the city all along.

While I wrote to the universe to heal me from the necessity of always needing all the information, of always being in the know, in control, of my relentless necessity of not trusting people, of the anxiety that builds in my stomach when a guy says he’ll text back and doesn’t. I wrote to the universe to give me a sign. If he was meant to be in my life let him be in it. If he wasn’t then let me let him go.

As he stood there, I was in awe, in awe of the synchronicity of the world, of how quickly the universe had answered my message. In that moment I knew, I knew I had to let go. He wasn’t supposed to be in my life. He didn’t want to be in my life.

“I promise I’ll text you tomorrow,” he said. I rolled my eyes. “Sure you will,” I said. He laughed, “There it is, I deserve that”. He was waiting for a confrontation, a confrontation I play in my head over and over now of what I would have said, what I should have said.

I wish I had let him go then—for once and for good, walked away with my head held high and my dignity but I didn’t. I went to the lowest low I could have.

My deepest shame is I still hinted at whether he wanted to sleep over that night. I lost all sense of worth that day. It was the lowest I had ever set myself to. He brushed off the comment with a little laugh. He couldn’t. A friend of his was leaving, so they were going out late that night.

“But I’ll text you tomorrow,” he insisted. I said “Do what your heart desires”, and walked away from him. Whatever intimacy we had created was completely gone. I felt the energy between us shift, for the first time I felt the unfamiliarity of a person's presence. I had no idea who Rory was, and I would never know who he was.

He did text me back the next day, late in the afternoon. He had gone on a bender with his friends. So did I want to get coffee with him the next day?

“Sure,” I replied. “At what time?”

Until the next day passed with no response.

“Hello? Are we getting coffee or not?”

No reply back. Sorry I had to leave for Ireland, my sister is sick again he said. I spent the day saying goodbye to my friends.

It was the same line he had used before, a line that stung deep, sure we were friends with benefits, but never got the benefit of actually being considered enough of a friend to say goodbye too.

And like the two broken condoms you try and try to make fit until it breaks, so did I.

I broke.

He never texted me back after that. Left my message on read. I never knew what would happen to him, nor whatever happened to his sister. In the following months of retelling and unraveling the story in my head and to friends there were bits that never fully left me at peace. The fact that he was a University lecturer, but I couldn’t find anything about him online, no trace of him anywhere, always struck me as peculiar. He was only a year or two older, there must be traces of him somewhere out there. It is nearly impossible to not have any online presence.

Four months since we stopped speaking the thought occurred to me that as a professional he must at least have a LinkedIn profile. So I went digging again. The itch in my brain and the gut feeling that something was off fended off all sleep in me. In a matter of minutes, I finally found him. I finally understood why it was so hard to find him.

He had lied about his last name. Since the second day I met him I asked him, like any sane woman, knowing a man’s full name is an important piece of valuable information for your safety. Men can't be trusted, and certainly not strange men you met randomly through an algorithm on an app. We look men up on the internet not only for curiosity but to get further information about their behaviors, their interests, anything that could point to them as any type of potential threat.

I don’t know why he lied about his last name, only that finding out made me feel even more foolish. Because he was lying. Throughout those six months there were things he’d say that I knew he had answered completely different another time, like the reasoning for not having an Instagram account, the timeline of his past relationship with his ex-girlfriend, responding to messages about something completely different that we were talking about, as if he was mixing me up with some other person he was having a conversation with.

In the matter of an hour, a six month situationship unraveled into anything but. It was all a lie.

I learned many things from Rory, ironically I learned to trust men again. He helped me cure my anxious attachment style. As my trust in him grew the lesser anxiety I had on the days he didn’t text back. It’s funny how our trust was built on his lies, but nevertheless my nervous system subdued, until the instinctual cues kicked in again. I don’t regret anything with Rory, or with anyone mentioned in these pages for that matter. Rory was the last piece in healing my connection with men, healing the parts of me that needed validation most of all, that longed to be loved, even by accepting the bare minimum. I wouldn’t have been able to be in a relationship with Thomas if I hadn’t learned and unlearned everything I knew about myself and about love in all these years, with all these men, and with all my old friends.

What I will never shake from Rory though is that in the end and throughout all this time, he had an exit plan after all.

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This has been a part from “How To Love Yourself (By Loving All The Wrong People), a collection of essays on my experience of finding self-worth and self-love through the horrors a our modern-day dating cultures.

Most people see a man.

But I look at you at you and I think of you as a plant.

One of many plants that adorn my space, my heart.

I’ve planted you as a seed within me.

With a good pot, with plenty of holes to drain all the excess.

Drain everything that is not needed.

I’ve added really good soil to your pot. Rich in minerals and nutrients.

I’ve put you in a place where I think you’ll thrive.

I think of you as a plant, and like all plants I will tend to you.

I’ll water you.

I'll move you around if you get too much sunlight.

I’ll move you around if you get too little sunlight.

Like a plant prune your leaves.

Give you space to grow.

Change your pot if need be.

Like a plant I’ll watch you thrive, I’ll watch you blossom.

But like a plant I also know that even if I do my best, you might still wither.

You might still die.

You might still fail to adapt to the environment, to your surroundings, to my heart.

And that’s okay.

Not all plants survive. I’ve learned this.

Some require more water, more sunlight, more patience.

Others thrive in solitude, with the bare minimum of attention.

Some friends are Pothos, easy, giving.

Others Monsteras, cool yet intimidating.

But leave them in water and they’ll thrive without worry.

Most plant care is all about foundation.

I’m not sure what type of plant you are yet,

But I’ve planted your seed.

I think I’ve given you a good foundation.

All that is left is to tend to your needs,

adjust your environment,

And perhaps one day,

you’ll become a tree.

A double bed,

always half-empty,

never half-full.

I have always been the space,

to occupy someone else's double bed.

Always dreamt of the day,

I would have one of my own.

My double bed.

But now that I do,

it is always half-empty,

never half-full.

One side is always left open,

but I’m not quite sure for who.

My body obeys the boundaries of the two halves,

never to enjoy the entirety of the bed all to myself -

Sprawled out like a starfish,

all extremities relaxed.

It would seem like a blasphemy,

after all,

double beds are meant to be shared,

that is only how I know them.

So I await in my sleepless night,

for the next occupant of my beds’ other half.

For a double bed,

with two bodies lying dormant,

until the status-quo is reset, 

and my double bed yet again lies half-empty, 

most rarely ever truly full.

boys stare at me,

But neither ever see me.

I am a complexity too foreign to them to understand.

Written in another language,

with no translation included in the instructions.

I sit across tables from them.

I smile,

I laugh at unfunny jokes.

I’m inquisitive and empathetic.

I look at them and wonder about the child they once were,

what made them giggle,

what filled their nights with dreams,

what brought tears to their eyes,

and was someone there to wipe them?

I don’t know the person across from me,

but this what is fluttering in my mind.

Much more than what is fluttering in theirs I’m sure.

It’s not easy,

Staring into a stranger’s eyes hoping that you’ve peaked their curiosity enough to text you back the next day.

Liked you enough to ask about your day.

Sure, they’ll kiss you.

Fuck you.

Even give you forehead kisses.

But they never see you,

and the ones that catch a glimpse,

are blinded like the rays of the sun.

Perhaps I shine so bright it forces them to turn their eyes away.

Perhaps like the sun,

they only ever feel me around them.

My warmth exuding from the rays of my smile,

my laugh.

Like the sun I am forever peripheral.

Never to be looked at directly,

too bright for the untrained eye.

How lonely it is to be the sun.

But when the time is perfect,

how beautiful to be a sunset,

and a sunrise.

How I wish to be seen like sunrise.

How I wish to be seen as a sunset.

How I wish to be seen at my brightest.

How I wish to be seen as all three.

How I wish to be seen at all.

How I wish.

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“Do you speak English?”, I asked.

“Yes”, in your english accent while we both took an airpod out of our respective ears.

“Can you pretend to know me, a man is following me.”

You replied calmly, “oh of course.”

The light went green with the little man saying to move forward. We walked. The stranger still following behind. You asked me what direction I was going in. I'm going to El Mercat del Encants. As a weekend tourist, I'm sure you had no idea what or where that was. You've just seen the Sagrada Familia. Your eyes gleamed from describing it. You went out of your way to follow me two blocks in the opposite direction you were going. I looked behind vigilantly for the shadow of the man lurking behind.

“Does this happen often?” You asked calmly.

“No, not really. You get the occasional looks and stares, but I’ve never been followed in my life.”

What you didn’t know Jason, was that I was on a specific mission. I had been wanting to go to that market for ages. Always procrastinating or finding excuses not to go. I was taking myself on an Artist Date as prescribed by the book I'm currently reading: “The Artist’s Way”. A block away from the market we parted ways. I asked for your name, I gave you mine. You said sarcastically or perhaps in that awkward British way, “take care!” I wished you well on your travels. 

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What you don’t know Jason is that on the street where we turned to go our respective ways, there he was walking into my peripheral view. The lurking shadow. I tried to ignore it, but from the corners of my eyes I saw he saw me. I quickly walked into the market. Zig zagged my way between the rows of stalls and trinkets. A set of stairs led me to the second floor. Although its lack of people made me weary, I knew that within each stall was a merchant guarding its treasures. I found a balcony overlooking the entire market. A revealing scene as an onlooker peering from below at all the tiny people and tinier treasures glistening from the afternoon June sun. 

I looked down into my bag to take out my camera and snap the scene, but as my eyes met the floor, I could see the shadow of the man entering the market looking in between people. My heart raced. I stepped back so as to not meet the shadow’s eye. I waited a couple of moments before threading back down the stairs, dreading that the shadow might meet me halfway up while I was halfway down. But nothing. No one.

I hurried out of the market onto crowded streets. I picked up my pace and zig zagged again from block to block, looking behind me ever so often without looking too panicked, as to not give away my fear in case the shadow saw me. Or still haunting me. 

What now? My entire Saturday plan was ruined, Jason. I decided to make for a familiar coffee shop a couple streets from the market. Maybe sit myself down to write. What i should have been doing all along, the reason I took myself out on the artist date, and why I am reading the book. Unblock my creative outlet. Finally write something that is meaningful to myself. Worthy of the public eye.

Maybe all of it was a sign to stop distracting me from the inevitable. Writing. I got to the coffee shop. A sign on the door read “ Take Away Only, We’re Under Construction.” Perhaps so was I. I ordered a dirty chai latte with oat milk for a whopping 5 euros. I guess that was my artist date. 5 euros spent on overpriced coffee. But while I waited for the coffee, a man in a wheelchair walked passed, his terrier dog happily following alongside him.

I stared at the scene. Wondered what the dogs name might be, what the man’s dream once were. I settled myself into my skin. Tried to bring my awareness back to myself rather than to the shadow. I listened to the conversation the baristas were making. Watched the leaves on the trees above rustle in the wind. Maybe I should go pick up my film roll from the lab I thought. It’s on the way back home. So I did.

I started making my way to the film lab, chai latte now in hand. Still attentive to my surroundings. I shot a corroded door on my camera that was surrounded by a peppermint wall and purple graffiti. I watched 3 vibrantly dressed tourists smile as their gelato was handed to them while I passed by. I walked to the film lab only to see it was closed. Just my luck! It really wasn’t going my way, Jason. Or perhaps it was going the way it needed to. 

One last try, I thought. I’d been wanting to buy a Monstera plant from the local flower shop woman, Begoña was her name. The shop is only two blocks from my house. Here we go again! I set foot towards home. Now feeling the heat and the sun seeping into my skin. I stopped at a roundabout to snap a photo of Passeig Sant Joan. I observed the irony of a Caixa bank on the corner of a street. Above the entrance of the bank wall, a sculpture of farmers with livestock and grain.

I’m just one block away from home. Almost there.

I stopped again to take another photo of a building. I’ve always been intrigued by what it is. The sun was giving it a warm hue that made it look like a scene from a fairytale, with its brown wooden windows and green stencil on a white backdrop. 

Jason, I didn’t make it to the flower shop. It too was closed. For whatever reason I was meant to come back home. Sit myself down and face my biggest shadow. Writing. Writing this letter to you was natural. I was writing it in my head the entire walk back. Thinking about the conversation and what you would say in return. I don’t know you Jason, we are merely strangers yet, I felt compelled to write you this letter.

For whatever reason our lives intertwined for a brief moment on a crosswalk. Me going in one direction, you going in your direction. We both took detours because of a lurking shadow. Whether physical or metaphysical, I just wanted you to know that I found my way home. 

Safe and sound, I write to you as I face many shadows lurking in the background. I thank people like you whose light is aiding in guiding you back home. In holding your hand when you are scared and propelling you to face your shadows head on. 

I hope you too found comfort in our encounter. 

Sincerely, 

Ana 

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