***
Quietly, I sneaked out of the room and, captured in the darkness, tried to find my way to the kitchen. The silence seamed to intensify every little noise provoked by my insecure movements. However I knew my way around (maybe far too well) and it took me just a fraction of a moment, to cross the hallway and stir the unusual stillness that reigned in our kitchen. The night was playing with my willing imagination and forced me hurriedly reach for the windows and unveil the venetian blinds that separated me from the outer world. Subtle moonlight spilled over the motionless furniture and let me examine the room carefully. All was exactly the way we left it, although night deprived everything of its lively colours. On the table, burned out candles complemented the still life composed of empty glasses and unfinished bottle of red wine; undeniable evidence of our late night talks. In that moment, smile replaced my irrational uneasiness. I picked up my dad’s sweater carelessly lying on the chair and put it on, deeply inhaling that familiar mixture of smells. After a little hesitation, I poured the rest of the wine into empty glass closest to me and slid my feet into the comfy slippers left under the table. The glass door opened with ease. As I set my foot on an untouched blanket of snow covering the terrace, the cold air travelled through every inch of my skin. I shook it off, ignored the persisting shivers, and sat down.
So it is Christmas...
I fixed my eyes and on the forest covered in glittery frosting. It stood there unchanged, creating an illusion of nonexistent stability, but I let myself believe in it for one night. I let it be mine, my stable point in the universe. To me it seems that winter (no matter how ruthlessly cold) and the omnipresence of Christmas drowns the world in magic and even though it is not my favourite season, it offers me indispensable point of retreat. I feel like a warrior returning home from a battle in far off land; unknown and perilous; to remind myself who I am and what I am fighting for. It is easy to lose sight of those things when you are out there for too long. For ideas are not excluded from Darwin’s theory. Sooner or later, it comes down to survival of the fittest. If you don’t embrace them with clarity, if you let your concentration falter... they will evaporate under the pressing heat of enemy’s firing guns.
However, we are no longer in the middle of World War II, there is no one forcing us what to fight for, what to believe in, there is no defined enemy against who we unite and rise. We are not living in a fantasy world, where the territory of evil is clearly marked on the map and the quest ahead is clear. The world is the land of no one, without borders or signs warning us: Attention! Wet Floor! When I was younger, I used to wish to have that sort of clarity in my life... the enemy with face so I could reach over the edges of my own abilities, to fight for better world, to experience living. It never came and yet, I can say I experienced living... I reached beyond my powers... and in a way I continue to fight for a better world in my own twisted philosophical way. All that happened in the land of no one.
It is true, we rebel against the society and its strict models of perfection as if we were its slaves forced to swallow seeds of wrath against the world and each other; slaves fighting for freedom because our unhappy life is the result of this slavery. As there was no other choice... as if we were threaten by death to want all that we are only asked to embrace.
Never more than this year, had it appeared to me more obvious and truthful. As if finally one night an abstract dream, in which a shadow followed me through the dark streets of an unknown city, came to an end. Fast approaching steps behind my back made my heart skip a beat, I tried to run but it was getting closer and closer... I fought the despair but I found myself in a dead end, where at last, I would feel cold rough hands imprison my body and the blade slid my neck with ease, effortlessly ruining my existence. Then, as I fell to the ground helpless, the shadow, the phantom that followed me for years would kneel by my side gasping for air and I was able to see his face... my face... my eyes... so strange... so distant... reflecting the acceptance I refused to embrace.
The only person standing in your way is you.
If you want to see the face of your enemy, look in the mirror. What you will face is the worst kind of enemy. He knows your weaknesses, your worst nightmares... your dreams and your fears. We rarely realise this stranger works for us and responds to our orders only. It is easy to blame our failures on the government, the society, the church, family.... friends... much easier than taking responsibility for our actions. Ask yourself honestly, how many times it was your decision (or its absence) that made given situation more difficult or fatal?
We cannot influence things that cross our way... unexpected disasters, the way people act, fortune or misfortune... in reality we have no real power or influence over anything except of us. We are in charge of our attitudes. It is us who label things possible or impossible, good or bad, important or useless... If you cannot accept this responsibility, you will never be free... mainly because you will need the rest of the world to blame it on.
I sipped the wine slowly to help my body fight assiduous attempts of chilly wind to force me back inside. The only sentence lazily rolling over in my mind was: I am happy... This year I fought a lot, especially with myself in personal or professional sphere of my short existence. I won many of them. Curiously, I pride myself the most in my failures. On one hand, because maybe they were failures in results, but not in my acting... I did all that was possible and impossible... crazy and maybe unwise just because it felt so sinfully right... and it was. On the other hand these failed little battles taught me more than any victory and I do not regret I lived them, after all they are all mine.
I do not blame you, nor do I blame myself.
Strangely liberating...
For now I am hiding in the mythical ‘vacuum’ of Christmas, deprived of time. One day passes after another, whether Tuesday comes after Monday or Tuesday after Wednesday does not matter. They are all melting into one day without battles, bellowed challenges, worries, concentration... a day that lasts exactly right amount of deep breaths in and out... the right amount of late night talks with a bottle of wine and a head full of untold stories with my parents... with my friends... with myself... the right amount of snowball fights, random hugs and dancing... just right amount to make the Earth stop turning in my personal universe and prepare for the unforeseen.
I love Christmas, now more than ever. I found a secret passage to the vacuum, thus I may spend the holiday in a time loop with the most important people in the world and the rest... the rest ceases to exist just for a while. I indulge with almost sinful pleasure in love for them, essentially because I realized long ago that this love is not an obligation, neither is it pure emotion. I love them with an irrational emotional outburst as well as with reason. I am not quite sure how to explain it... this feeling came to accompany me more and more often as I travelled, until one day it stayed for good. This emotion has a power to make me cry... which is as you know impossible. I am proud of being part of my family. Thus I indulge. I laugh with pleasure, I quarrel with pleasure... and I have the time (or its absence) to realize it as if everything came and went in slow, slow motion.
Since I am naturally built by the bricks of curiosity and mended together by mortar of over-analysis, excluding current of time from my consciousness has not able to stop me from thinking. For one reason or another I feel like I am balancing on a needle point. One move and I will fall into an unstoppable current of events predetermined by the unconquerable law of gravity. I admit that this notion has a very fatalistic undertone but I cannot help myself in thinking I need to be overly careful with my choices this year. One thing I learned, is to trust my intuition, even though it makes these random notions so much scarier. The ideas in my head are starting to shape in reality. Will it ever work? Will I sit here next year asking myself the same questions or will they be forgotten, replaced... answered or unanswered? Who will I become in a year... in five years... in ten? Can I live up to my own expectations?
Who will I be tomorrow... in a week?
I am not so fond of New Year’s resolutions, although my naive mind is full of expectations. They might and might not come true... We will see... but till then, I will continue in the pursuit of happiness and maybe along the way I will change little bits of the world for the better... for now my only power lies in charge of my attitude.
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