Author: Gio

How much do you trust someone?

Growing up with the law of the jungle in place has taught us that trust is something that only a few deserve and almost nobody gets. Over the years, I saw the two sides of the coin and I felt under our skin how much damage mistrust can cause in one’s life. However, as much as I witnessed the downers of such blindness, I also saw the peaks of believing in someone and the joy and character it brought to ourselves, so when the time came to make a real choice, we chose to follow the latter.

The cheating world of lies in our life belongs to what we call the dark side of our blood. We’ve always tried to take distance from them, but mandatory symbiosis has never allowed us to. Conventions, conventions… this has screwed us over more times than those of being a true bitch to someone who really deserves it. Besides the damage buried deep in our soul, the dark was filled with a jealousy that destroyed everything around – family, friends and everyone else who was not themselves. There was no such a thing as a blood connection or a familiar relationship – everyone was guilty and deserving of suffering by one’s hands. And so they lived and still do.

I have always despised the dark side. Besides one of them being present in the day I was born, they have all always disgusted me. The way they talk, walk, laugh and behave towards other people, full of disrespect and extreme lack of consideration for others was back then a reason for us to lock ourselves in the bedroom and only come out for severe necessities while they were around. Everyone was a target and once so were we. Several times we were hit by their lack of scrupulousness, but this is a story for another time.

The good part is that, often, every dark side has a bright one right next to it. And in this case, it wasn’t any different. Our bright side was filled with joy, love, care and respect. Loyalty was and still is one of its pillars and pride takes over the names of its members. The bright side has always been our greatest happiness and the reason why we’ve become who we are. So many chances we had to bend to shadows, but still the light in our lives was stronger and their voices clearer on the path we should take. So we did.

Life hasn’t been easy with trust and belief, though. So much we’ve laid our heart on someone’s words and actions only to see them turning into ashes in their hands. We saw our dreams vanishing and our plans driving away. We were told that we were naive and  that we “should have known”. How could we if we faithfully chose to see your words as real? Things didn’t make sense, but life was showing that we were a fool.

Over and over again, I saw us having to rebuild a part of our life which was destroyed by another’s words and actions. Over and over again I asked her how much longer could we stand all of it before we collapsed entirely and for real. And over and over again, she chose to lead us through the only way that mattered: the path of truth.

Our hears, then, remain with trust. So much we feared a life of bitterness and sorrows, but we know what has brought us here. We follow the road of the choice we made long ago, when we learned that a handshake was enough confirmation. We believe in people and that won’t ever change. And as many times we fall we will again restart, with our mind and hearts, even if destroyed. We will find the strength to re-glue the pieces and to give it another chance. They say darkness sometime will get to me, but in fact I truly know that goodness is the only way. And, thus, we go.

The last days of the year are usually those that makes us think the most about our own lives and the paths we’ve chosen to follow. Well, at least they are for me.

For many years now, I also go along with the mindset and make sure to review what happened in the past year as well as to hope for the next. Essentially, I look into the exact eve one year before and which of the things I thought and felt I managed to carry with me throughout the three hundred and sixty four days that followed. I put life in a nutshell and I look it through.

Well, today is not different so the revision begins. Last time it was new years eve, I was in a different continent, with different traditions, people and climate, and our hearts were filled with other feelings. We felt complete in many ways and empty in others, but there was a sort of balance in between that gave meaning to things. We enjoyed the midnight kiss with our heart full and trusting, and the sum was enough to hope for a better year.

Lessons is all we’ve gotten since then. We learned about our true past and our fate, but mostly about ourselves and the person we wish to become, as well as the world around us. There is a new awareness in our days which has opened our eyes to what our past has done to us and to what to expect from the upcoming calendar. Either way, I believe that the best lesson -and perhaps the most important one- is the one that feels unnatural de most and that I was perhaps never ready to learn: I am all alone.

I come from a place where being alone isn’t a part of life, neither a natural choice nor a healthy thing. We’ve always learned that being alone only brings you bad thoughts and a heart fill up with sadness. Whenever one said that solitude was a choice, there was a certain belief of madness and a persistent desire to become a company, reassuring that “you are not alone!”. Well, this all changed this year.

Personally, I never liked to be alone. I have, of course, experienced loneliness but never with a permanent hold of it. It was often waiting for something or someone which was certain to come. Being alone was a temporary thought and time which had never come to stay. The perception of loneliness was scary and negative and I always tried to avoid it, until I realised that am alone, no matter how many people I have next to me. I have learned about loneliness this year in a very unexpected way and no matter how many people I know, I am all by myself. This year, I watched them all go, one after the other. People who moved abroad or who simply chose to look to the other way. It came to me like a punch in the face and it is teaching me something that I wish to carry with me throughout the new year.

So now, after loads of sobbing and whining, it all came to this: being alone doesn’t mean to be unhappy, but to trust in your own guts. Nobody to give you advice, nobody to hold your hand, no one as your emergency contact. Less fucks given to all of that, more belief in your own inner-power and consciousness. I don’t know how much of me already believes in it, but it has certainly become my new years resolution. You come to this world as a cub and you need to learn how to face the jungle, so become the hunter and feed yourself. It is a scary time, but it is a new time.

As much as we know that tomorrow is just another day, the feelings of end and restart renews energies and makes us believe that it is all fresh again. And for that and for much (much) more, I am embracing myself, acknowledging my loneliness and starting a pursuit for what is real, tangible and true: it is the awareness and the inner power that I know lives within me.
Happy new year!

“It is about the spirit”, they say.

Yeah, there is something about it, doesn’t it? After a while as a grown up, I’ve come to find it interesting the amount of ‘pressure’ that is released during the countdown as well as how much it changes people’s feelings and perceptions of what’s going on out there. It is almost as if everything was renewed, our sins forgiven and a new chance just received by post granting us the opportunity to do it all over again, but better. Oh… Christmas time!

I remember when we were younger and we would be already at the farm for days, surrounded by smiles, food and good jokes. We would gather, almost all forty of us, celebrating the fact that we were together for this special holiday. Although we lived so close and saw each other almost every week, being together on Christmas had a special taste, a different meaning. Propagandas, commercials and people repeat the same thing all over again: “It is a family time” and so we followed, we gathered our best ones.

When I was born, she already used to spend the holidays at the farm. It was her favourite season and in the best place in the world. She thought of it -as well as we still do today- as a sort of sanctuary, where only good things and memories are allowed to happen. The farm is the place where there is always a spot to someone else to eat and sleep. Nothing is spared. There’s love and hugs and music and party. No anger or sadness would enter the front door and nothing that could possibly harm anyone. The spirits that live in farm are just like the ones that consume the Christmas time, but all year long. Her Decembers were filled with this goodness and these are certainly the best memories we share.

I guess that by now I know enough to tell how hard it is this time of the year for her. Almost nobody around us understands it, but Christmas is the only time of the year which makes us question whether our decisions were right and if distance is the real solution for things. So much hurt lives underneath the equator, but also so much love and joy. All in equal proportions, under the same roof. I feel her heart getting slow beats the more it approaches the Eve, which they all celebrate. Her thoughts are constantly going back and forth to memories and wonders of what would they be doing this year, who would be there and what were they going to eat tonight. The more she thinks, the more it hurts, but neither can she stop doing.

We live in a place where people don’t give much importance to the Eve, so it’s more up to us to try and make it special. We’ve managed to re-create something similar a couple of seasons ago, and bring a bit of the special taste of this moment to the ones we share our days with, but it led to nothing but heartbreak. Perhaps I was misunderstood or the other way around, but fact is that almost no joy was shared and nothing was truly acknowledged as merry as it should have been. My feelings and homesickness, constantly forsaken by the bystanders were shouted at and as I drove off, I stopped to cry alone in the forest. I was alone, far away, and I had no one to bring those good feelings back to me or, at least, to accept what I had brought along with me and really wanted to share. This happened two seasons ago and this strange refusal still haunt the day.

But now we are gathering again for another Christmas. We’ve got another chance, so we’re using it. I’ve checked the phone and it says that everyone will be together again at the farm, playing Secret Santa, talking and joking all day, taking long walks at the forest or down to the waterfall. Sounds magical as I write and I can really feel it as I remember. I can barely hold up my tears for missing it so much, but that’s what us expats do -we hold on. I guess that now, as decisions and changes come to place, I can truly say that perhaps as long as I carry these memories and its feelings inside me, it won’t ever matter where or how I spend these days. This goodness will live forever and their truth is shared in the hugs I get to give and the good things I get to wish to others.

So to get in the spirit, Merry Christmas! I wish you laughs, good food, jokes, warmth and, above all and all, make good memories to carry within.

There is a funny thing about making decisions that has always puzzled me.

It is like at the point of no return, the moment when you have to either cross the wobbly bridge or to go back , that the whole notion of right and wrong simply disappear. You get caught up in the midst without knowing precisely what to do, which opinions and possible outcomes we should consider and, in our case, how many feelings are involved in the process. I like to think that people often make life-changing decisions with ease and although it doesn’t quite look like that -given everything I’ve done-, sometimes it comes up as a tricky process for me.

If we start with the choice we made of getting out of our home country, I can tell you that this was a big exception. That was a very easy one. For most individuals I know, getting out of their comfort zone is one of the hardest decisions they can ever make, if they ever manage to do so. They seem scared and afraid of everything, letting all sorts of delusional assumptions stop the idea from growing. Well, in our case, everything that others feared worked as well as a good yeast. We knew, almost from the time of my birth, that we would get away at some point.

As we grew older, this certainty developed into a more robust idea which soon enough became a reality that was changing and challenging as it should have been. It was a process of growth and understanding of whatever lied beyond the imaginary lines that surrounded the territory I was living in. For us, leaving the nest was the beginning of a pursuit for a better life and possibilities. I would no longer have to live within the dirt that covered all the morality which was once thought to exist. When we left we knew that looking back was only for those who would have something to see and that wasn’t our case.

After our first experience in foreign lands, ‘new things’ became our drug. We wanted to experience more and to refine our tastes. Deep inside, we knew there was a will to settle down, to have a house and a family, and this constant thrive for being more has always walked along with that – it is the feeling of conformity that we so much tried to avoid. We aimed high and we wanted to be on top of things. Nevertheless, we were still us and our heart still spoke louder most of the times. The plans and goals we had at the first departure as well as the certainties we held close together were constantly challenged by the feelings in our heart and the relationships we engaged with. Friends, boyfriends, little things in the house that made us feel home. We craved so hard for a safe life filled with certainties that we forgot our true purpose.

For many years, we went along with the plans of others, constantly being the one giving in for the greater good, agreeing on things that made us partially happy. All of it was okay because there were love and dreams, even if only one-sided, most of the time. Love has always been both the fuel and the reason why we never regretted the decisions we’ve made, as they drove us through different routes, discovering roads that were filled with joy and ‘the new’, but that also changed the way we look at life.

Eventually, we paid a very high price for letting our heart decide for us, but looking back now and wiping some parts of it, they did more good than bad. That is true that we still carry the memories, the betrayals and words of despise that were said to us, undeserved, but I guess that after everything we went through while still living in the nest, there are very few things that could deeply mark us. And so, we grew stronger from those experiences. And so, it happens again.

I remember the last time I took a decision only and solely for myself. I had been playing along for a while and thinking always on the bigger prize, but I had just had enough. I did not think of anyone else’s feelings or thoughts, or whatever implications my decision would possibly cause in someone else’s life. It was about time to stop with agreeing, going along and even facing the unforgiven without acting on it, so I decided to set my gps to another location. I had gotten a little lost along the way and I wanted to go back to my primary goal, rescuing that bit of myself that got lost the moment I decided to choose with my heart. The decision was made and luckily it wasn’t too late.

When my words were spoken, I saw those eyes I so much loved staring at me and, without hesitation, regret or even taking time to give it a second thought, his mouth went on replying “I think you should go!”. For the first time, I felt that I had been stupid. Perhaps another feeling should have consumed my body, but ‘stupid’ is precisely what I felt at that moment. How could I give so much credibility to someone who barely cared enough to ask me to reconsider or to stay? How could I still be deliberating with myself about a decision which would bring me only benefits? Yeah, I know… I’m better than that. It is clear, I get it now.

Fact is that although I am not the same, love still lives here. The need for decisions does too, of course, since life continues and we will always be summoned and chased by changes and disputes for as long as we live. And I know that I should have learned my lesson by now, but there is a nice saying about ‘better late than never’ which I believe to be quite applicable to this matter. I am learning to not insist on staying when someone tells me to leave, although somehow, in my crazy-twisted way, I still believe in miracles.

It is true that things are different and that the time for big decisions is coming again. My lessons are still being learned and my heart remains bounded to truth and commitment, but my mind tells me that there’s something else out there and that this is the time to go find it. I guess the universe has given me enough signs after e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g I’ve been through. Most of all, I think I am starting to listen to my true calling or maybe I am simply starting to listen at all. To myself, to others, to what life shows me and to what the people I love ask from me. Sometimes it lacks me confidence, but progress has just begun.

And for that and for more, I am choosing myself today, looking back at the that old list and changing the course, once again, moving forward to beat what they call fate.

Many people have reached out to me to talk about this story, but some feedback kinda made me think. In fact, it was one in particular. It happened not so long ago, I heard someone saying that “this story is getting so heavy that it is difficult to follow”. We wondered whether more people share this thought and I decided to do something about it. First, “I told you so”, and I did it in the very chapter One. It ain’t a pretty story, I know that, but you need to know every bit of it in order to understand the rest. But believe us, we know the feeling. So for today, we’ll tell you something cool.

There is something that I have always been very proud of and that I like to think of as a branding point of our journey around the world. It makes us laugh in times of holidays and helps us with making the best of our memories in new places. It is about the first time we went to Bali.

Going to South-East Asia, specifically to Bali, was one of the things on the top of our bucket list. Funny enough, we ended up going to Asia many more times after that, but that one had a special touch. We were living in Australia at the time and we took a small holiday to Bali and Singapore. To me, I was flying to magic, exotic people and a entire “I don’t know what to expect” kind of trip. It felt like I was flying for the first time, although we all know the irony of that already. We landed and there he was, our tour guide: a short young man on his late twenties, with a very nice smile and friendly welcome. He showed us the way to his car and so our adventure began.

One thing I heard some years later is that “In Asia, everything sorts itself out”. As a control-freak, you can imagine that this was something really hard to overcome and to live up to when you face an entire nation of opposites in front of you. Fact is that the statement was very truthful from the very beginning. First, we hired a tour guide, but the guide had a driver and his car had a baby chair in the backseat. We were like, “okay, but do we also need to pay for the driver? How does that work now? This is definitely not a taxi!”. We had so many question that only a squeezed smile was able to come out. But fine, new country, holiday, woohoo!

That was just the beginning! Many more unexpected things happened along the way. We had different cars to take us around, one with a dog in the open trunk, another with fruits and vegetables from the market, but we always ended up safe and sound wherever we needed to be. In the end, we had a blast. Amazing places, breathtaking sights and friendly people. Indonesia was and still is one of the most peculiar countries I’ve ever been to, essentially because you need to pay to get a visa to enter and another leave. It is cute how they want to hold on to you forever in case you cannot pay for getting out of the country.

All those worries from the beginning went away as swiftly as the days, totally disappearing while we sat by Kuta Beach watching the orange sunset of Bali. What a place, what a holiday. From that moment on, we knew that there was no border we couldn’t cross and no place we couldn’t be. Our bucket list had many items, but one of the top three had just been crossed and we were anxious to cross even more. Little we knew that Asia would become such an important place for us and that many times more we would come back to delight ourselves with their amazing food and culture.

And in the end, the certainty of the return as well as the knowledge of broad horizons gave us the confidence we needed to plant the tree of travels inside us and let it grow with a promise to never, ever settle for less excitement. We then vowed to never stop moving.