eulogy for the living

i remember the first time i did this. back then i had no computer yet, let alone a blog; and moleskine notebooks had not been revived yet - and even if they had been revived back then, it would have been impossible for me to buy one in the god forsaken end of the world where i was born. digression. i had this notebook with a cover in black paperback - the closest thing of a teenager's journal i've ever had - and during my teenage years i used to write a little on it. now and then, you know. i had it with me in that day, in that last day of that year. lunch at my aunt's had been wonderful, as it always is, but the family's joy was not soothing me. so i left the house and went out for a walk. 

i remember the day. it was cold and gray, somewhat windy and willing to pour. i was oblivious to it, and left home nonetheless, with my notebook and my red-ink pen as my only company (back then i really liked to write stuff in red; don't ask). my footsteps eventually led me to the river side, to the small wooden walkway build by the river. a beautiful place for lovers, a friend of mine from lisbon said once, after going there in a weekend. it was true back then, and it's still true: that walkway by the river is a wonderful place for lovers. and even to get laid, if one picks up the wooden benches surrounded by the bushes. digression. anyway, i went there, and sat in one of those benches - the same one in which we both would sat three years later, and where she would offer herself to me in such a predictable and crude way that it made it impossible for me to accept it, her. digression (damn it). i sat, i looked at the sky, i opened my notebook and i wrote. in red.

i was feeling so miserable that day. it was the last day of the year; and looking back almost brought tears to my eyes (if only i could cry). it had been a terrible year, that one; almost everything bad that could have happened had happened. shattered love. hurricanes at home. lost friends. hell, as a seventeen year-old kid would see it. i wrote all that, and in the following day i went there again and wrote another page. a chronicle. the end of the year and the beginning of the next one. the end of all things, and the promise of rebirth. no, no, this is too optimistic for my taste. 

i'm doing it again, and the wall of text above was merely the introduction to the last post of 2008 - a summary of the wretched year that is just about to end. if you ask me, it was about damn time. 2008 was a terrible year. it started well - as a matter of fact, it couldn't have started better, far away in the kingdom of danmark having the best new year's party of my life. should have stayed there for my own good; but as i returned, it all came tumbling down. first, by doing something that far from making me feel proud, made me (and makes me) feel sore as hell. no one has the right to hurt another. i, for one, had no such right. and all that to try to reach a heaven that was nothing but the third sphere of hell in disguise. it pains for having wasted my time the way i did. it pains for having allowed myself to do it, because i knew it, damn it, i knew it: it would be a nightmare again, a recurring nightmare. had this voice in the back of my head telling me that all the time. ignored it. bad call. fucked up big time. got nothing out of it, nothing but a couple of hard lessons learned and a heart broken beyond healing. shattered love, again, turning me into a bunch of scar tissue. then, friends. oh, friends. made some new ones, some good ones, but will go to that later. lost some as well. some good ones. had no choice, have no choice; i'm definitely not up to put aside my pride again. have nothing to apology for. she does, though. she does, but she won't do it. and so it won't be fixed, and we've gone out of each other's reach at last. it's ironic that our friendship blossomed during the four years we were living hundreds of miles away from each other, to end right when we're about to live in the same city again. 

death also made her appearance, first by knocking at my door and then by getting in uninvited. it was not unexpected, of course; but we are never prepared for it. we might be waiting for it every day, we might wish for her to come in our dreams, we might know that it would be all for the best - that it won't be when she shows up. we are never prepared for death. she comes, and time stops and everything becomes dark and in the end, when light is allowed back into us, we are bleeding inside and another piece of our heart has been shattered. and death's wounds, they are never truly healed. they can't be. we might lose someone for many reasons, but there is no fallen love or distance that can open a wound so hard to heal. 

of course, the year had some good things. someone popped up in my life in the most unexpected way - but thinking about it, some of the most important people of my life have arrived in the funniest ways. she was no exception, of course, and the only thing i'm looking forward to for the next year is to see her again. 

plans for the evening included staying at home alone, with a good cigarrette, a good wine, a book and some background music. a late-hour invitation has dragged me out of town though; so by the time this post will be online, i'll be somewhere else. hopefully having fun. even though a part of me will be drifting away, far from me, far from everything. the part of me that can never ever let go will be somewhere else. after all, as radiohead sang once, "this is only half-way".