Hurricane 2012

This year, I had 4 first days of work, I visited many different cities I had never been to, I met my new nephew and my new niece.

Plus, this year, which is finishing today, I felt loneliness deeply. Like never before. Weird, as the family grows.

This year, I fell in love.

I met a new friend, one incredibly kind person, the owner of one of the biggest hearts I have ever known.

This year I came back home after a travel and realised that once you leave, it's never the same again. When I was back, my sister was a mother, my older brother was a father again. And that put a lot of things in perspective to me.

This year I drove a car for the first time, I tried different foods, I saw a little person learn to walk and talk, I read 2 books that blew my mind like it hadn't happened in years. I water-skied and took a cruise.

I remembered how much I like to dance and swim, I learned that I like hiking and that there are views worth seeing all around, sometimes I even found that view in the mirror and some other times in people's eyes. I learned that I was born very far away from a lot of things and that I have to try hard every time I have a dream. I learnt that I am a big dreamer and that that can be both good and bad. I learned that I need to learn about balance. I learned that nothing can be balanced never.

I experienced kindness like never before, I was the receiver of kindness from the heart, altruistic kindness from altruistic hearts. I wonder how many people can say that.

I think that I had never spent so much time alone with myself. I learned the good and the bad about me again, and I still like and dislike the same parts of me. Again, this year, I couldn't find any balance when it comes to feelings. I can only be balanced with the things that I do.

I went through the same doubts that I have gone through throughout my entire life.

I learnt that the world can be so small for some things, but big enough to forget and forgive.

I saw how the things change their perspectives, I saw how people don't change, I saw temporary truths becoming future lies. I realised how rich my culture is, how important is to be away to see the real things, to appreaciate my roots. And that is sad to say, but it's the truth. I learnt that I prefer that people miss me than having them sick and tired of me. It's good to be away.

I felt disappointment again, I felt grace again, I felt love and disgust for people, I felt the cycle of life again. The same factors in a different order.

I came to the conclusion that living and dying are the same concept hiding behind a different word. It will just depend on which word I choose to use.

I understood that is not bad to want to be alone. Only that it's hard for people to understand that.

This year, I officially acknowledged myself as a traveller. And I don't want to stop. I want to see more, to live more and have less reasons to die unhappy, I want to meet more people, to experience more different things and foods and points of view. I wanna hear about what people have read, I wanna listen to horrible bands playing live, I wanna have a beer in the most common bars, I wanna see my best friends and feel the time, the age, the blood running through our veins, the same old shit that we enjoy to talk about. I want to fix the world.

This year, I admit that I can be so selfish... that I truly choose not to care about others sometimes.

I saw how charming I can be and how cold I can feel at times.

This year, I loved the world more than any other year in my life, I loved everything that's in it, all it gives and it shows me every day. I learnt that I need to be more grateful, more aware, more intelligent and more indifferent, I will start to be more humble.

In 2012 I finally understood the concept of trust. Also, the strange and foreign word "hope". 

I think I can have more control over things, maybe I like it that I cannot control stuff sometimes, but I will leave that for next year to give it a thought. This year was the year of learning and teaching from a different perspective, I taught my language and culture abroad, and back in my country I taught language and culture but also showed my own life and I saw how interesting my stories are, how funny my life is, how rich my family is, how happy I can be, how cycles do repeat, how common everybody is, how special everybody think they are, how beautiful that is. This year I felt more like a student, a learner, an observer of my own mistakes and actions. I let more things happen.

One cool 2012-thing: I wrote a lot and became closer to my writing again. Another cool 2012 thing was that I came to the realization that I LOVE MY JOB. I love being a teacher and I loved my students, both the little ones and the adults. I learn so much when teaching. Thanks for that, 2012.  

This year felt so free.

I also saw how life can resemble a movie at times, without the happy endings, an independent movie that is.

Life showed me again that everything is complicated and simple at the same, that there is a beautiful chaos out there waiting  for me to be tamed, that there are a lot of knots in me that I need to untangle and there are a lot of places IN me that I need to see.

2012 you were the year of the outside world, and I am grateful for such a wonderful year full of violent contrasts, I guess I will never learn enough, my brain is too small to catch all the lessons, to read all that is in between the lines, I am not good with hints whatsoever. Eventhough I have an open mind, I belong to a more practical way of things.

This year was one hell of a practical year, a lot of things were done and seen and experienced. I loved you, 2012. You were magnificent, you were imposing, you are a year that I will talk about for the rest of my life probably. You were like 2 years in 1 year and you felt incredibly short and intense. You were full of things that I will need years to size up and reflect on. You were a year that put me back to my place, I always knew I was strong, I had fogotten how fragile and weak I also am. You reminded me what a human I am, full of dumb complications, confused and needy.

All that time alone brought memories of my teenage years: I saw how much I like being with myself. How rich my inner world is. How enriching it was. I really miss me now that I write this.

2012, it's hard to let you go. You are my favourite year so far... the way you started was loving, friendly, movie-like, you took my breath away with your first months. You were a dreamy year.

There is one thing in mind when I make all this remembering: love. You brought me love. Loads. You brought me friends and kind people into my life. But you balanced it with the bitter things to remind me how things are never what we want. Well, I never know what I want.

I know one thing: I want to be closer to my friends... the ones here in my homeland and the ones abroad, from all the different continents.



Eventhough my last days of you have been more grey than I'd like them to be, when I think back about it all, I know it was an outstanding year, full of different colours and tastes. Maybe you gave me more than I could handle and that is why I end you this way, with this feeling that I can't really... I think it's fear.

I don't want you to end, because I feel like I know you so well. But you have to go, it's like everything in life. What starts, ends.

Thanks for all the high ups and the usual downs. Thanks for what you have given and for what you have taken.

You raised the bar for all the coming years, which I hope are many to come and count.