This year I won’t wish you good health. Nor will I wish you love, nor money. This year I will wish you something greater than that. The very essence that lies behind each of those wishes. I will wish you a long-forgotten, stigmatised, disparaged feeling. An essential need of human nature which is marked as a blind alley on the map of our human paths although it is the only one leading us to the desired place.
We have all had scratches on different parts of our bodies, and everybody licks their broken skin using their own personally devised magic words. Some people do it by whispering, some by whining, but everybody nurses it the best way they can and know how to wishing only one thing. To make it heal. Or at least to make its edges turn into crust so that they can assuage their fears that, finally, things are getting better. Every scratch has its Name, Surname and date of birth. As if it were some kind of register number in the cosmic archives of pain. What hardly anyone ever knows is whether that gaping hole in the heart muscle has its – expiration date.
We are all familiar with the saying “Your life is shaped by your thoughts”. Only a few words, but they speak volumes. And everyone agrees with this saying. In principle. Because when we feel it – it sounds true. But when we try to analyse it – it sounds painful.
Give me your hand. Let’s go together to a place that you feel exists, but think nobody is crazy enough to go there with you. Let’s go to a place that is familiar to both of us in terms of its geographic position, its coordinates on the map and altitude. Let’s go together where we used to go to a long time ago. To that place of ours that our minds may have forgotten about, but our souls still remember.
The only person you were born with and who you are going to die with, the one you go to sleep with every night and the one you wake up with every morning, the one you can never escape from or hide away from anywhere – is you. People tend to forget that very fact most frequently. They refuse to understand that their mind, body and spirit are the only home they will ever live in and for some reason best known to themselves, they decide to spend their lives like tenants… Instead of seeing their own reflection in the mirror clearly, they search for a skewed one in other people’s pupils of the eye, thinking it is more beautiful.
It all started when, in some state of fantasy, I thought I could do a lot because I was strong. It started the day when I convinced myself that, to achieve success, it is enough to have the strength to fight for it. Since strength can cloud your consciousness, I thought you should fight for what you wanted. I set out on a quest for winning my own better future so confidently, not knowing then that in battles the stupid were hit by arrows first and those from the infantry the fastest.
This hasn’t been the best year. To any of us. I am not saying this because I am a pessimist, on the contrary. I am saying this because I believe that better years are yet to come.
In the new year I wish you embraces that are not going to leave wounds on your skin but goosebumps, promises that are not going to remain dormant but become part of reality. I wish you to let go a bit more and worry a little less. Dream of someone so often and so intensely until you wake up next to that person, and if you already have someone you wake up next to, then I wish you to continue sharing the same dreams in the future.
I spent my childhood playing on my own. Instead of with people – I played with toys, because I did not have brothers to keep me company. When I learned how to read and my social circle expanded, I realised books understood me better. They talked less and said more. I was bothered by all the noise coming from the loud-mouthed, because in the world full of hollow hearts, it echoed even more loudly.
It is very hard for me to forgive. I do forgive, but only myself and my insomnia know how much strength and effort it requires. Especially when you do it over again. Especially when you forgive the ones closest to you over again.
Like all the other people in this world, I also have two wolves inside me. A white one, tame, strong but sensitive, strict but just, a guardian but a well-intentioned one who could forgive anyone. And a black one, a shabby, starved avenger, who’d deliver justice with his jaws, punish by his actions and only forgive those repenting on their knees. In a fierce fight between the two, the one I feed always wins. I have no way of knowing how, or why, which demons from the past raise the one starved and barely alive to its feet, the ferocious wolf, which witchcraft they employ to give it strength so that, despite being neglected by me, it still ruins my sleep…
I used to think you had to be a player to succeed. I used to think you had to calculate sometimes, tolerate, keep quiet, turn a blind eye. I used to remove my piercing before entering an office, cover tattoos at job interviews, keep my mouth shut while bosses threw phones to the floor in a fit of rage, instead of holding the hands that I love, I used to clench mine in my pockets. In short – I was wrong.
