I never stay because no one ever says "stay"

Legend has it that a few years ago, a group of spinsters friends and I (likely, the most spinster of all), met on February 14th to go to a bar and drink some beers of spite. Right: don’t judge us. Whoever who hasn’t got drunk to the rhythm of Franco de Vita, Alejandro Sanz or, in the worst case, Paquita la del Barrio, may cast the first stone.

Oh well, maybe you can judge us a little bit: in our purses, besides the make- up kit (my friends), the cigarettes (me) and the cellphone (all) to delight us in the blank screen full of those "I love you" we knew that we wouldn’t receive, in that distant and heartbroken occasion, we had pictures of our ex-boyfriends. And on the middle of the table, besides  the beers that came under the spell of  “waiter, serve me another drink in the broken glass”, the mandatory “chifrijo” and many unfulfilled longings of castration, we had a piñata. Right: now you can judge us. The purpose of all this night out was obviously cathartic: to symbolically smash, with a broomstick, all those bastards whose photos we still kept in the drawer. The ghosts of the past relationships.

Today, one of my friends is married, two have boyfriends and one is engaged, and her wedding in Panama will be my next excuse to go on a trip. All this happened as I went to travel Asia and Europe. Right: even though each and every one of my friends swore she would remain single until the very last day of her life. Things have definitely changed.

Oh well, there are things that never change. Right. I'm still single.

 The truth is that, for me, love has become something like an unattainable miracle. It’s something that happens, yes, but not to all of us. Some people go to the Olympics. Some people go to the moon. But I don’t.

Maybe I'm dead inside. Maybe I already loved way too much and the amount of love that I had inside me is over.  Maybe I've become an insensitive psychopath.

Pont des Arts. Paris. Forever alone.

Whatever the reason is, the fact is that I find amazing (as if it happened in another life), that I ever had a boyfriend. And not just a boyfriend, but three boyfriends. It seems to me that before it was very easy for me to fall in love, and that strength, with which the wind of love used to hit me, has ended up being distributed in an effective wind energy system, channeled to other activities that I find much more productive, as traveling and writing. The “fell-in-love- Andrea” has died, and the ridiculous Pinterest board where I plan my unrealistic wedding has become, simply, an unexplainable pastime in the middle of the office boredom.

I must say that, besides love, everything else seems easily achievable to me because it depends, only and exclusively, on me. Traveling, writing ... even cooking. But this business of relationships needs two to dance a good tango. I guess psychoanalytically that’s the reason why, despite I’ve always wanted to attend tango lessons, I have never done it.

During my trip to India, unlike other times, I did my best effort to spend alone as much as I could. Although I have traveled to many places alone and I am the sort of person who deeply values ​​her moments of solitude (writing, in fact, is a lonely act), one of the points to go to India all by myself was to get my PhD in solitude. Because of the countries I've been to, in this one, unfortunately, the presence of an alpha male of the same specie does everything INFINITELY easier.

Since the very first day, when I had to sleep on the floor of the airport after a 12 hour flight, only to wait for the sun to rise and take a taxi, I began to wish with all my heart to have a man by my side. As I said in a previous post: every woman who has gone alone to India deserves not only respect, but utter and profound admiration.

And still, when I saw all these women traveling with their partners, I did not care about the eternal glory of the independent traveler and about the immortality of my backpacker lonely quest. What happened to me, rather, was a not so prestigious (if not pathetic) desire of crying: 30% envy, 70 % of self-pity. With my self-esteem a little bit high, because of my audacity to come alone to India, the most chaotic country that I think I will ever be in my life, (that only people who have been there will understand me), I told myself : "Come on... I mean, I 'm not thaaaaat ugly. Ok, I don’t have a hot body, but my 36B size bra must compensate something and I can cover my Greek profile with a nice hair. I am not a pain in the ass thaaaaat much: sometimes I'm crudely honest, impulsive, stubborn and impatient, but I always tell the truth, I am a determined person and live with passion, which is something. I am not thaaaaaat silly: ok, don’t trust  me on adding 2 plus 2, but I speak four languages​​, I have two college degrees, I know how to play three musical instruments, I read a lot, I have a published novel and I write things that people seem to like. So why the fuck am I still single?"

Wiping my tears of self-pity (which are not that useful  at times like these, when you spend two whole days alone in a hotel room, burning up in fever without someone who can help you to walk to the hospital; or when you wander in a taxi around a city ​​without electricity at 4 a.m. in one of the countries with the highest rates of rape in the world, or when you travel in a wagon full of soldiers who do not stop looking at you for seven hours), I decided I would travel India without any pair of pants behind I could hide myself.

 Desert. Loneliness. India and me.

Instead of a pain, being alone in India became a need. I said to myself, "If I survive India alone, there is nothing I can not overcome alone". And I repeated it over and over and over again, like a mantra, convinced that it was something as unpleasant as vomiting, but essential to feel good at the end of the day. I needed to throw up the need to be with someone. That attachment to impossible causes.  Alone. I needed to be alone. I would not give up for anyone, I would not change my itinerary for anyone, I would not stay for anyone. This is between India and me. Between India and the superwoman who, in his misogyny, Nietzsche never described.

Yet,one morning, I was no longer alone. One morning I woke up in the arms of a guy, with a bus ticket in my pocket for 8:30 am, on a rooftop in the city of Jaisalmer, built in the desert of Rajasthan. It’s funny how cities are built in the middle of nowhere: against all odds, in a desert, empty and dry, life could arise.

That morning, in which new pages of the book began to be written and others were never written, the mosques calling to pray were the first thing to announce that, for me, the time to leave had come. I opened my eyes, but I closed them immediately and I cuddled myself even more in that perfect world made by his arms around me, circular as this planet I never get tired of travel. The truth is that while his arms were much, much smaller than the huge waist circumference of the equator, I enjoyed a lot more to stay among them than to go out and travel around the world.

I still do not understand what happened to me. I believe more in Zeus and all the Olympian pantheon than in Cupid. But I can not find any other reason, despite how cheesy this might sound. I find no other reason to explain how a random guy, who boarded the same bus as me and who initially did not call my attention at all, had the power to hold me and kept me away of that urge of running away all the time, away of that fear of being with someone, that fear that is one of the reasons why I travel that much. I guess it was the atmosphere of Jaisalmer:  if life can emerge in a desert, life could arise also in my desert. Or maybe I should never underestimate the power of a random guy.

 I have met many guys in my travels. For several of them, I even crossed half Europe, the Andes and the ocean. And even I've fallen in love with some of them. But this guy was the first one to achieve something that I used to think was impossible: without a word, he made me stay, even with the bus ticket in my pocket. And then, he made me stay even with a train ticket in my pocket. And then, he made me stay even with a plane ticket in my pocket. The first man, in the end, that knew how to make me turn my back to the world and continue sleeping in his arms, until late in the morning.

Despite this story, and the fact that I did not know how to expose my graduation thesis for that degree in autonomous solitude that I searched in India, I think I should receive, at least, an honorary degree.

Yes. I can be alone. I feel good all by myself. Anyway, the only being who I will really spend the rest of my life with, is me and it is essential to learn to be happy by myself.

The conclusion I reach is that, despite all these viral gospels running around Internet warning men not to fall in love with a girl who travels, I think that, at least in my case, maybe one of those guys could fall in love with me. And I could fall in love with him. I do not even know how he may look like and still I can not even recognize this potential candidate. What a shame, because I would be stalking him on Facebook by now. Good for him. Bad for me.

I know I do not give the image of the ideal woman. My life is anything but stable. I give the idea that I do not need anyone. The idea that, as I change countries, I also change guys. I guess that scares anyone who has ever tried to love me. And so, there have been men who have said good bye to me (in their own words), in order to “not have a little bird inside a cage ". There have been men who have volunteered, in a very indifferent and enthusiastic way, to take me to the airport or to the train station (and they have done it). There have been men who have even believed that I never loved them.

The problem is that I never stay because no one ever says "stay". And since no one says “stay” I do not say "come with me".

I never stay because no one ever says "stay."

(Ironically, the guy who made me stay took this picture in India).

This guy, who didn’t call my attention at all when he boarded the bus in Jaipur, changed me. If you knew when someone important is going to come into your life, maybe you should know it in advance, so you can welcome this person with the honor he deserves (or so you can previously investigate him in social networks). Well, the fact is that when he talked to me the first time to check if he was in the right bus, at that moment, I did not know what his character in the novel of my life would be. Today I know. He changed me because he raised that person I once was, that person who can feel again after suffering ”the stone effect”, that one that, somehow, you transmitted me.

For me, love is still like going to the Olympics, and the moon seems very far away from my window as I write this. I have a high risk of spending the next February 14th beating a pinata by myself (this time allegorically alone in a bar, because by that time I will be the legitimate spinster of my group of friends). Certainly, the next man who attempts to make me fall in love with him will not have an easy task, because I 'm still married to my loneliness. But I agree that I could begin to negotiate the divorce. I could start training for the half marathon at least. I could start firing some rockets. And if that guy actually exists and succeeds, if he makes me get on the podium and walk on the moon again, he should be ready to enroll himself in some tango lessons and he should be ready to be one of the luckiest guys in the world.

Consider yourself warned.

Are you a guy? Would you like to go out with me? Are you a girl? Would you like us to meet and smash a piñata together? ;) Then send me an email and we'll see what happens, but do not forget that if you liked this text and if you think that being a writer is a respected job, like any other (including yours), you have two options: if you really think I write well, click the buttons on the right handside and subscribe yourself, or share this text in your social networks so more people can ride the rocking horse.Thank you for reading! :)

My life has been worth every minute

Each year near my birthday I sit down and meditate about the curious and profound matter of time. It`s interesting, by the way, that my birthday actually happens to be near the alcoholically important Palmares Festival; near the economically awful month of January; and like this year`s case, near some embarrassing election campaign.

Pff! Bummer! Yeah, I admit it. I am not exactly a fan of my birthday. First of all, I just don’t know how to react when I am in the spotlight for 24 hours. It seems to me it`s too much importance and that everything would be easier if I had a twin brother who to equally share half of this attention with. Secondly: I never know what face to make when people sing happy birthday to me. Should I stare at the cake? Or should I stare at everyone who is standing around me? Should I smile? Should I pretend I`m trying to focus on the wish that will magically pop up to reality as soon as I blow out the candles? At the end, I am so nervous I never wish anything, which makes me think I have wasted 32 very valuable opportunities to make my cosmic dreams come true. After that, I am attacked by some kind of self-awareness and low self-esteem effect and I think no one is going to remember my birthday. Instead, I feel everybody will totally ignore it because, even though there are many Facebook birthday calendar apps, people nowadays don´t really invest their time in recalling dates. On the other hand, I strangely and uselessly tend to waste energy and keep my mind busy constantly recalling everyone else´s birthdays- by everyone I mean famous people, first grade friends and even people I don’t like. To make things worse, I get inevitably attacked by a horrible Peter Pan syndrome: my outfits are more childish than ever and I feel like going around antique stores wishing that out of the blue a genie will come out of an old lamp, a vase or an 80`s computer just to grant me eternal youth. I get very anxious about the unavoidable passing of time, and I go through and existential crisis thinking that since January 16^th 1981 I started to die. Anyway, I am not good company between January 8^th and January 15^th. Consider yourselves warned.

As part of my Peter Pan syndrome, I tend to swing and wear colorful socks…

In addition to my neurosis (so short but dramatically described in the previous paragraph), I consider that the fact my birthday is in January- I`m a Capricorn- basically pushes me, almost by default, to the lovely entertaining hobby of philosophizing about the passing of time. All of us, who follow the Gregorian logic that counts the times the Earth goes around the Sun, tend to devote ourselves to deep end of the year thoughts for about 5 days near December 31^st. However, on January 3^rd at the latest, everybody has concluded their own inner analysis and has moved on. They will meditate again on what important stage of their lives they are going through only when their birthdays start getting closer and closer. For now, May and August still seem to be very far away. Now, since I was born in January, I continue pondering over the end of the year conclusions. Therefore, when January 16^th finally comes I am completely absorbed in a fucking mental disorder.

The thing is that the passing of time is one of the most mysterious phenomenon of the universe. Neither physics nor philosophers or shamans have been able to find out how it happens or even how to control it. Not even the devil is willing to ignore it. Very well did Mephistopheles denying it to Faust, even after Faust had sold his soul to him: he would grant Faust anything he wanted, but the possibility to say “time, stop!” The passing of time is such a mysterious matter that, as in Thomas Mann´s The Magic Mountain (the only book I read last year, and well, I haven´t finished it. I know, a very embarrassing reading balance in 2013), we don’t even know how to perceive it because we can´t smell it. We can´t taste it. We can´t see it. We can´t hear it, and clearly, we can´t touch it. So, if we can´t perceive it with any of the senses that help us discover what´s around us, how do we feel the passing of time to the point in which some people can assure half an hour has passed and be right without even checking a watch?

As we can see, I get a hell of a mess in my head. However, this year, my regular thoughts about the passing of time have been softened by a definition I consider brilliant about this matter. At the end of December, while going over my facebook year, among pictures, phrases, videos and some of the rides of this rocking horse, I ran into an article about a dictionary whose definitions have been written by children. The book is titled House of the Stars: The Universe Told by Children, and it was written by Javier Naranjo, a teacher who put together 500 definitions of over 133 words. Such definitions were given by children from rural schools in the East of Antioquía Department, in Colombia. I love to read the definitions given by the children about profound concepts because they definitely see the world differently, through the angles of some windows adults don´t usually see through any more: the simplest angles.

Thousands of men and women have tried to define the matter of time (I dare you, dear readers, to define it for me. I can bet you will think about it for a good while), but none of them has ever seemed as true as 8 year old Jorge Armando´s definition: Time, something that happens so you remember.

While I write these lines, I am exactly four times as old as him but I couldn’t have come up with such a wisely simple definition. I mean, if time is something that happens so we can remember, I welcome the passing of time. For me there isn’t anything more valuable than memories.

Dali´s Persistence of Memory. Time and memories in one portrait.

Memories are the essence of life. I am sorry to attack the naive vision that considers that the only thing that counts is the present and that the past is fucking gone. Here, ladies and gentlemen, everybody lives out of memories.

You know, the present is so short that it practically doesn’t exist…So short that at the moment you, dear readers, have reached this point of the sentence the first words already belong to the past. The present, although short, is beautiful, but useless. The shooting star is so beautiful, but its light is not enough to guide us through the sky of a dark night.

Life, as we know it, is practically made up of memories and depends on them entirely. We depend on memories to find the words that we`ve used to describe what we`ve lived since we were little children. We depend on memories to recognize those who are around us and to know what role they play in our lives. We depend on memories to move around the streets of the city to go back home. We depend on memories to remember how to turn on the computer and get to work. The only thing that does not depend on memories is what works automatically, such as breathing, going to the bathroom, and the beating of your heart. Our memory is what saves us from just being mere living creatures, so we are human. This is why, to me, Alzheimer and amnesia are the worst illnesses of all. They take away from you the ability to gather those memories that make you human and define who you really are.

Dude, if time is something that happens to remember, then what a success! Really, I think it is great that it goes by! If the price we have to pay to have memories is the passing of time, I am glad I am one year older, even though sometimes I feel like moving to Neverland so I don’t grow any older.

So, dear 32^nd year, thank you for having gone by. Even though you leave me with a body that does not lose weight so easily, that has been warned about quitting smoking, that has some gray hair I sometimes pull out fiercely in front of the mirror as soon as I see it, you also leave me life pages full of memories, pages that were boringly blank before.

My mom and I in a coffee shop in Amsterdan. The best moment in my 32nd year.

Pages that tell the story of how I worked up to 17 hours non-stop taking care of German dogs, making beds in a hostel, and translating a shitty book for peanuts. Those pages have taught me that if I really want to become a writer, I need to believe it first and work more seriously on it.

Pages that tell how I lost my fear of riding motorcycles and my fear of having feelings for someone again in the moment I hugged a guy who knew how to ride all over the streets and through my scars.

Pages that tell how, during a week full of tears in Berlin, I realized there are stories that are not as good to be written or to stop me from writing new stories.

Pages that tell how, under a surreal landscape in Nepal, one day I opened my e-mail and the cover of my first book stopped being a dream to become a bunch of pixels.

Pages that tell how I realized I was not dead inside; that I was still able to feel and weep over the paper when I had to say good-bye to the hero of a story.

Pages that tell how in a snowy crystal attic you can find the essence of good literature and the lips you had been wanting for 15 years.

Pages that tell how a coffee shop in Amsterdam can work as a time machine to take you back in time to those days that are gone to never come back. I was able to sit with my mother, but she was my age, it was the 70`s and behind the pot smoke, for a while, those days seemed to be back.

So if time had to go by to make me grow older but also to leave me all those memories, then, time, please keep going by. At 33, ladies and gentlemen, I can say that my life has been worth every minute!

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