First of all: thank you, thank you, thank you for all the wonderful reactions on the «birth» of my blog. All the comments and the personal messages I received touched me deeply and reassured me that I’m on the right path. I’m so incredibly grateful to have people in my life who grow with me and who will accompany me on this new journey, even though I won’t live right around the corner anymore. =)
I read somewhere once that you can outgrow your own life as if it was an old pair of shoes. These might be the prettiest and most beautiful shoes but if they don’t fit anymore, you’ll have to put them down even if it means that you have to let go of something you liked very much. This picture definitely strikes a chord. In addition to that I feel as if I shed my skin. Like a snake, I outgrew a skin that no longer fits me. I let go of a layer that apparently also protected me from certain stimuli that I cannot filter anymore. While I’m writing these lines the ear-piercing noise of a jack-hammer penetrates my windows; outside my main door I can hear strangers talking as if they’re standing inside my apartment; the smell of my weed-smoking neighbour enters through the bathroom window; the flickering light of the television from the flat on the opposite site of the street casts patterns on my wall and a passing train causes the glasses in my kitchen to tremble.
All of this isn’t a new phenomenon, I have been living with it for over five years and as I have written in my last post, it hadn’t bothered me for a long time. But now that I have decided to leave and that I’m starting to organize my move, I long to wrap myself in Stierva's quietness. In my mind I’m already decorating our old house, I’m thinking about which plants to place in these quite dark rooms and I can see myself bouncing through the snowy forest in my winter clothes.
Yet, along with the great anticipation that I feel thinking about my new place, every now and then I can hear this little voice inside of me. It pricks my side and lets my heart grow a bit heavier: When I close my eyes I can still see us cooking in my kitchen. There is still this small piece of glitter on the floor next to the toilet, stuck there after you paid me a visit on carneval. Now in autumn I can hear the radiators rumbling, which caused you to join me in my bed when the noise kept you awake on the night you sleep-tested my flat. And I still can’t stand too long in my hallway without remembering the horrible moment in which I learnt of your passing.
I cried so many tears in this apartment and during these hardest of moments it lulled me in with comforting memories of you. My move also comes with the realization that I will leave this cozy nest behind and it hurts to admit that I have outgrown it. This move also means that I’m leaving a piece of our history behind. It also means that there won’t be an apartment left in this city in which we created memories together. And it also means that I let go of something I don’t know if I’m ever going to be ready to.
But now I’m returning to a place where we also wrote a part of our story: On a New Year’s eve we were standing outside of the house in Stierva, just the two of us, and peered into the clear night sky filled with stars. I am beyond grateful that you got to know the place I’m moving to and I still remember how you talked about how much you liked it for weeks after that evening. And so I know that I will meet a part of you, my dearest Aline, in this house, too.
November 20th, 2020
