Butterfly

Sometimes I feel like I want my previous life back, I want to wake up in my bed in Bucharest, looking on the window to the neighboring grey block of flats, take a quick shower, dress ready for office, eat some eggs and make me a milk with chocolate cup and catch the underground for the next thirty minutes to get to my workplace. Workplace is not the correct word here, I’ve always liked that office and my work was, at most times, creative, fun and different every day. Writing was my life – and still is- for some reasons I won’t ever understand completely. I was born to be a writer.

My journey to South Africa is then a crazy loop - how could I gave up that writing? I mean, I had a nice life, a nice job – maybe not the best, but still nice. And money wasn’t ever an issue. The social scene was there too – either going out with some of my friends journalist or hang out at events and press conferences, meeting new people.

But there must have been a feeling of loneliness that. Yes, that feeling when you want to have a walk in the park with your lover beside you and you can’t. That feeling when you want to be kissed – I just love the kissing part- and you can’t. Not because you don’t have someone to long for, I so dislike the idea of not having a partner, but just because he is physically in the other part of the world, thinking and waiting for you.

I guess it was meant to happen to me, after all. I always complicate my life and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to sit still in one place and watch the years pass by, until I find myself too old for this journalism, too old for the city buzzing nightlife, too old for any of my getaway thoughts. I am a butterfly, looking for new flowers to sit on – if you cage me, then you might just kill my dreams. And I dream a lot, you know, but South Africa wasn’t even close to my dreams until I met Rick.

I’m still reading “Eat, Pray, Love”. I think at this point it has a strange influence on myself. I’m perceiving divinity differently now, more than just a bigger soul that must be there in order to make sure I won’t follow the darkness paths of existence. Yet, I think I have found my true God and that is Love. It must be Love, if not what the hell I am doing here? In the pursuit of God, it is said to abandon your everyday habits with the hope that something greater will be handed to you in return for the things you’ve given up, like my life before South Africa. But, sadly to say, I wasn’t searching for a God, my God has already shown to me in the most difficult periods of my life – when I felt that nobody cares about me during my school years, He would simply say “Ignore it, you will finish it soon and you’ll have a wonderful life, you’ll meet people who really understand you”. He was right. When I was at university, in need of someone to love me right then and there, I stumbled on the wrong people. God used to say then “He’s not the right for you” and for a while I really felt that my choices are so wrong, that I myself needed a change. Hence the Internship to London, in search for a different breath of air – with no boys hunting whatsoever. But then it happened to me. God said “Go on, go with him, you’ll be safe”. I never had even the slightest thought of being uncomfortable in the presence of that cute strange whom I ran from the club with to make a hot night to remember even now, after three years.

God was right again. He’s always right. In just a couple of days, the stranger became Ricky, my South African boyfriend and it was easy and right to fall in love for this guy. My love quest was finally solved, without even asking for it. But then, what will happen when I return home? It was always the sad question while I was in London. Mom said “Don’t get too attached”, I still remember her words when phoning me while I was taking the double-decker bus back to my place. But God said “Go on, you’ll be fine, you don’t have anything to worry about, he loves you”. And God was in my mind all these years, telling me that it’s ok to wait, that I shouldn’t give up my love now, that he is the right man I need in my life. For most people, seeing your partner just three times in almost three years, for short periods of time and then spend your time waiting, waiting, waiting, chatting everyday before bedtime to wipe your tears of your face, must be a painful, unwanted experience and totally crazy. For me it was one of the hardest things and also one of the sweetest thing I’ve ever done. All in the name of Love.

So God is in my Love for Ricky. I found Him at last and I wasn’t even trying that hard. No ethereal experiences, no praying for hours, not even a trip to an Indian Ashram. For me, God is all in my mind and I can access Him whenever I want. Right now, when I wonder how long I will be that nostalgic and jobless, with a feeling of being useless to human kind? And He says “You have found what you were looking for. You have a wonderful new life, place to stay, eat and sleep and a husband who adores you and you adore him as much as he does. What do you need more? You found Love. You found it far from home, I know, but you found it. Wasn’t that what you wanted? Wasn’t that the only thing that counts after all, when you know that one day you will no longer exist on this earth and you will think back at your greatest accomplishments?”

He is right again. My solely desire in this world was to be loved, appreciated for what I am, told that I can do whatever I want or that I can handle everything. And not being compared with anyone else. Not a strange girl, who liked to write for ever since she learn how to do it, who was seen and told to be anti-social, a crybaby and not like the “others” or not even like her sister. Where was the Love then? It wasn’t that my parents didn’t love me, maybe because they didn’t know how to express that better in words. But I don’t blame anybody here. Once I began my quest for Love, I felt stronger and I made my own decision. My God said to me that its time to move on, so I never looked back when it was time to leave my family, my country and my job. “Go ahead, it will be fine. I will take care of you. Ricky will take care of you. You are wanted there.” Again, he is right. My leaving was easy and no hard-feeling. I couldn’t believe it. Most people won’t ever leave their country like that, or their family, and go and live in other country, a country you only seen in TV documentaries and a mere month two years ago on a visit. Most people are afraid of losing their jobs. Most people, except the ones who are now in the search for Love, won’t understand. But the ones who do – “how sweet”, they say, are the ones who truly know me, what matters to me right now. It might be sad to say it, but it’s worth it a million times. I’ve come in the right place to build my memories, with the right man at, the right time. Although it’s extremely hard to build a new life, I admit it.