Author: Anca Dunavete

No, the yearning is alive and things happened there. You happened there, I happened there – and I will happen there again – and who knows who else? I know the same yearning dulls all other aspects of life, and I'm not ready to do that to myself again. To walk myself through another door marked "forever, for now". So I keep myself here, between whats ifs and what is. But I can't help the curiosity; and it's a pulse, isn't it? As I keep going the words start pouring out from the deepest, bloodiest part of my heart, and I want to get good again. I want to be close. I want to reach out and give love like white flags of surrender. Then I’m triggered and I take it back and I'm strangers with everyone again. A lot of the mind is not amenable to hard-headed logic. In an ancestral part of me, I still operate with a sense of danger and a need for control. But when I write, it doesn't have to be that way. And when I loved – and maybe, when I love again – it doesn't have to be that way. [...]

September 🍂 I’m so ready for sweaters, hot drinks and cosy evenings ☕ as September is my birthday month, in true Virgo fashion I reflected on my year and made some lists (obviously) 📝 I'm not going to share them this time, hopefully I'll be sharing the results soon. But I do want to share some lessons I have learnt, read and resonated with this year. Here's a reminder to myself, and a... list, for you. We all love lists, right? Right... ? 🤓 • Criticism, defensiveness, stonewalling and contempt occur during moments of lost compassion (toward yourself and others.) • Whether or not it matters in five minutes or five years, feel what you feel. • There's no point in asking yourself, “What can I do to relax?” Instead, ask, “What do I need to feel safe?” • Only those who care about you can hear you when you’re quiet. • If they don’t chase you when you walk away, keep walking. [...]

Dear Diary, I am fucking terrified. There, I said it. Deep breaths and would you look at that, it wasn't even that hard – and I sure feel better for it. But wait, I'm letting myself off too easily. That doesn't fix it, and I can't leave it any longer. Sweeping dirt under the carpet only works until you want to walk back into the room and own your space again. And I do. I so do. So here I am, one year and two months later, finally writing this shit because if I don't write, I overflow. It's been one year and two months since my last post on this blog that I love more than any thing (I love some people a little more than this blog, so you'll understand.) I've opened it and looked at it and closed it more times than I can count during this time, but I was never brave enough to hit the Publish button, or even the Write button more than once or twice – and WordPress knows, those were bad drafts. [...]

I did the maths and the overthinking and then I went house hunting across the city, with my only condition being that the place was unfurnished. After all, it had always been my dream to decorate my first house – where I had, I just knew I had, to live on my own. The first studio was awful. Tiny, smelly, cheap in every way. I was close to taking it only because it would have been mine. That’s how badly I wanted something of my own. The second place, however, was perfection. A one bedroom flat in the city centre at a price beyond reasonable became my home for the next 12 months. I put all my energy and enthusiasm into furnishing it as quickly as I could while sleeping at my best friend’s house. I must have done it all in less than a week, though. Charity shops, friends’ generosity and some savings made this flat look like everything I had ever dreamed of. And then, I moved in. And I cried. A lot. [...]