The Joy of Being Alone

I am haunted by the scene from the movie Maria, where Maria Callas – played by Angelina Jolie – walks near the Eiffel Tower and the crowd around her comes together and breaks into an aria from Verdi’s Il Trovatore. The whole movie was beautiful and sad, but this scene keeps coming back. A few days ago, I’d heard the aria again, in a different setting, and ever since then, I have an earworm. It could be worse, this one is at least very sophisticated.

Given that I’d more or less stopped listening to music and listen to spoken word radio all day every day, it is a little bit unusual to look up music on YouTube, search for CDs and print out lyrics. Instead of keeping with current music trends, I am going well back. At least I know that I don’t have a mid-life crisis, I guess. But I have an urge to learn the lyrics.

Going to the cinema the weekend before last had been a special occasion. It was my first solo trip in many years. I used to go regularly in my twenties. I wouldn’t think twice about it. Every week, I would look up the schedule, consult my shifts, and write down dates and times. I kept up with new movies and caught up on some good classics. It didn’t even occur to me that I was quite unusual in going alone. Instead, I always had a very good time. When I travelled a lot, catching up on movies was my favourite part of time between trips. I even wrote letters to magazines about movies, got a few ‘star letters’ prizes, and dreamt about being a film critic. I suppose that if it was happening now, I would have a movie-related blog, active login for IMDb, and my socials would be full of movie links.

When I’d moved in with my now husband, we went to the cinema together, but it wasn’t the same. I was working shifts and we lived far from the city, so, it was a major trip. Besides, our tastes were very different. I still remember our heated fights in Blockbusters on Friday evenings. When he made the choices, I had to watch some drivel. When I made the choice, I ended up watching alone – no problem for me. Eventually, I was again going to the cinema by myself, safe in the knowledge that it was better for the both of us, remembering the time, earlier on in our relationship, when he made a massive scene because I forced him to sit through a foreign language movie with subtitles that were not in English. I had asked him in advance, had given him the option to go and do his own thing, he had insisted on being an enlightened best boyfriend in the world, had sat through the movie (that I enjoyed) and then, on the way home, he had thrown a massive tantrum about my selfishness. How dare I not put him first? Considering the amount of time that I had stood around waiting for him, sat around waiting for him, and sat through dinners, parties, and occasions, I thought it was quite rich, but, of course, waiting for him was always okay... It is always about the man, isn’t it?

After the conundrum of low income, motherhood, pandemics, housewifing, and back-to-working, my only visits to the cinema were for family movies. And they were great. It was nice showing my child what an adventure a visit to the cinema is.

But now, with some freedom, transport, and income, I can once again go and see what I want when I can (when I want is probably no longer an option, but that’s fine). Seeing the trailer for Maria, I knew that it was meant to be seen on a big screen. And the showing times in the local cinema were good, I had a Saturday off, the family was sorted, so, I went out by myself. What a treat. We are always meant to be in a group or with a family, it is assumed that it means that we are having a good time. No advert promoting a leisure activity shows people on their own having the best time ever. But ask any mother and she will hopefully admit that having only yourself to look after and please is the real treat. Yes, sometimes it is having a bath and lying down with a good book, but, sometimes, taking yourself on a date with yourself is the best thing you can do.

I took the bus and looked at the familiar streets from a different angle. I brought a book to read. I bought a glass of wine in the bar. And I went to see the movie. The small room filled with women. No man was interested. There was definitely a vibe. Look at us, I thought, we do manage to treat ourselves sometimes.

The movie was beautiful. And sad. And, once again, it showed that men come into our lives and don’t make them better. Instead, we change, accommodate, and care. The movie reminded me that I used to like music. I will listen to it again. Perhaps I will dance again—when was the last time I danced? But, most definitely, I will take myself out on a movie date sometime soon. I think I have already picked up the next movie to see!

Magical Five

 

Five might not be an obvious choice for a special number and might not be considered lucky, but I am slowly growing excited about it. Next year will end in five. And I rather like the years that end in five. In 1995, I graduated and began my independent, adult life. Everything was ahead of me. In 2005, I thought a lot about what I had been through so far and accepted some hard-learnt truths about relationships. It was time to assess, make changes, leave some things behind, and consider a change of career. Nothing was as definitive as ten years ago, because my life was in motion, very unsettled. Even so, I was building something, learning a lot, and discovering new paths to follow. There was still a lot ahead. In 2015, I was a mother, married, settled, and buying our first home together in the UK. Even though I had already put down my roots, this was the final step to finally being at home, without questions. Besides that, I had many other ideas about my future and most of them didn’t work out in the way I’d imagined. What I’d learnt on the way was good, even if not particularly wished for.

And now we are awaiting 2025. A quarter of a century will be behind us. What will the year with five on its end bring to me this time?

I had published my fifth book this year. I am now officially an author of five books. That feels very special. And it makes me very happy.

Looking at the pile of five books with my name on the spine brought memories of another achievement. I had been five times pregnant in my life. I have five memories of wonder, anticipation, happiness, and love. I am a mother of one child, so, yes, it doesn’t look like such a journey. But still, I always remember that I had been carrying a new life in me five times. Four short times and one with an extra two and a half weeks overdue…

I get up after five in the morning and have dinner at five in the evening. I could go on. But I don’t need to, you probably get the general idea. I am trying to see the good things ahead of me, because the world doesn’t seem like a very happy place right now and, if anything, we are bracing ourselves for the next year, waiting with gritted teeth, wishing more than hoping that things will work out. We don’t even expect improvement. The optimism of the late nineties is gone, and so is the naivety of the early two-thousands. The world is not a safe and stable place and we are not making it any better. Very often, we feel that cynical resignment is the only option to function.

So, I look at the numbers and hope against hope that it will be a good year. Because when I look at the little picture, life is still good. I wake up every day and see that I live in a nice place, surrounded by my family, I have a home and a job I enjoy, I am creative, and we don’t struggle for food or resources. We work hard for it, but we are so much more lucky than many. The incident of where you are born and when decides your faith. So, yes, I live from day to day and I write books and then I talk about them, and maybe it is nothing important on the big scale, but, together with many other things that I do every day, they are part of the puzzle that keeps me going. And now I will see how the 2025 puzzle of my life will work out and how it will be remembered.

All the best to you all in 2025.

Waiting - My New Book

 

Sometimes, it is hard to understand how a book idea comes around. When it is a nice, easy-flowing story, it is simply inspiration. But sometimes our darker side takes over and we have to write things that are not so nice. Am I weird, we may ask? We are fiction writers. We create stories. They come from us but they are not us. When bad things happen to our characters, it doesn’t mean that they have happened to us or that we wish them to happen. Stories come to us and we write them.

In 2017, I was compelled to write the book Waiting. It wasn’t a book back then, it was just a story meant to be made into a book. A character moved into my head and demanded to be written. At the time, I thought the character had nothing to do with me. But she worked in the hospitality sector. So did I, albeit a longer time ago and not anymore. She lived on the outskirts of Manchester. So did I. She moved in the same streets. She was a young woman, married, and wanted a child. So far, so similar, although not quite the same.

I wrote Waiting when I already had a child. I was dealing with multiple miscarriages and was facing the fact that I would most likely not have more children. I was going through a lot of pain and I didn’t even realise how down I had been back then. I was lonely, not well supported and quite isolated. Motherhood was my saviour on one hand, demanding role that couldn’t be paused on the other. These were no easy years.

And in the middle of this turmoil, I suddenly had the urge to create a character that was raped, got pregnant and had to deal with the fact that this may be her only chance for motherhood. She had to come to terms with her trauma, with the baby, with her family and her husband and their opinions and reactions. Why would a person who was hurting sit down and write an ugly story? I don’t know. I felt slightly ashamed at the time, describing things that were hard to imagine, researching procedures I wouldn’t wish to be needed even by my enemies, and creating situations that only added to my own struggles and dissatisfaction.

Besides the struggles of motherhood, my journey was also a journey of a partner and wife. I was living through my own struggles, arguments, and disillusion with my partner. I was often feeling trapped; unable to leave and move on as I would have done in my previous, single life.

I had written Waiting during NaNoWriMo, got it out of my system and let it sit back in the finished drawer. I didn’t think about it for a long time. I got the story out of my system. A few years later, I started working on my finished stories, slowly bringing them into the real world. They were edited, rewritten, reshaped, re-read, and then, finally, made real – into e-books and paperbacks. Waiting was always the last one in the line. But its time had come. It wouldn’t be fair to leave the story behind. So, this year, I dusted off the manuscript and got to work. And suddenly, I understood. My long frustration, pain, loss, sadness, disillusion and disappointment pushed me to create this story. Some writers go to horror, fantasy, or crime. Others write novels filled with cupcakes, fashion, and good old ‘will they/won’t they’. They need happy endings to heal. Well, I go to the hard-to-define fiction. I write stories. And sometimes they are more difficult than the average stories for women. That’s how I dealt with challenging times in my life.

Vivien is a young woman who has to overcome a bad thing to reach something good. She doesn’t have an easy life and her relationship is seemingly good, but has its own challenges. So far, so similar to me and many others. I can’t wait to put the finishing touches on the book and send it out into the world.

Black and White

 

Recently, I spent some time going through old documents and photos, putting together a rough family tree. I was prompted by many questions from my child which collided with my mother’s desire to clear away old boxes of photos and documents and with my sister’s findings of our dad’s old family tree project.

In his last years, he was going through old records and managed to find some old birth, graduation and wedding certificates.

There is something very solid about old black-and-white photos from days when you had your picture taken in an atelier on special occasions, wore your best clothes, and cherished these mementoes forever. The same can be said about those carefully hand-written documents, where people’s lives were marked by hand with no digital backup and no available copies.

I grew up in the end of the black-and-white era when not many people had cameras at home and photos were developed from films, often at home, in a makeshift dark room. Then we got better cameras, colour films, easier development, and moved on to digital and mobiles. I still like to carry my digital camera around to take pictures instead of my phone and I do get some strange looks for it.

Years ago, I lived in Japan. Once, on a quiet street, I passed a very old woman. She was small and frail-looking but with lively eyes and a smile on her face. She was bent forward and walked with a stick. As I approached her, she was hardly reaching my waist, but she looked me in the face and seemed delighted to see a tall stranger wandering in her neighbourhood. I was thinking about how many changes she had seen in her long life, how different her country had become, and how happy she seemed, curious to see and witness everything. Meeting this woman, however fleetingly, was one of the moments in life that I can recall, even though it wasn’t significant, didn’t last long, and didn’t perhaps mean much. In a way, it did. Two different generations of women and two different cultures had passed by on the day, offering smiles to one another. Maybe she remembered me, too. Maybe she had talked about meeting me with someone. Who knows?

I have not forgotten about this woman and sifting through the old documents, to which were added all of my school reports, I was thinking that although I am about half of that old woman’s age now, I am also a relic of the past, a witness to many changes. The other day, I had to explain what a telegram was to my daughter and remind her once again that people couldn’t have sent a text in the past. Not even a phone had been in every home back then. Telegrams were the best way to send important news to people.

The old certificates and photos are witnesses to the old times that matter only to a few of us. I was surprised how little photos we have of our older relatives. I remember my grandfather but don’t have any photos to show to my daughter. I was happy to see documents that told me where my grandparents and my great-grandmother had come from but I realized that I hadn’t heard much about it. My great-grandmother had a few stories about the past that she had told us repeatedly. There were also many stories that she didn’t want to bring up. She was an illegitimate child, born to a young girl who was a helping hand at a farm. Most likely, the owner – her boss – had taken an advantage. My great-grandmother had grown up with the shame of ‘father unknown’ written on her birth certificate. Her son had committed suicide. She had had a stillbirth. She wouldn’t go into details about it, apart from telling us that she didn’t want to see the baby or know much about it. It was to be taken away and it was normal back then. I recall a little, old, black-and-white photo of her first son displayed in her room. That photo is now gone and I was thinking that it would have been nice to have it and add it to my mosaic, reunite it with other images. From my other side, I have a little bit more images – one of my grandfathers was a keen photographer - but fewer documents. My mother wasn’t as keen to explore the past as my father had been. Even so, thanks to some family stories I have discovered, there might not have been a blank on the father’s side of my maternal grandmother’s birth certificate, but it doesn’t have the biological father’s name either.

Mine is just an average family. Even so, there had been affairs, scandals, and – for both sides of my grandfathers and grandmothers – divorces. My family tree had been a little bit simplified to keep it simple. For now. Perhaps I will go deeper and work on the more present generations. I have no idea what happened to most of my cousins. We are spread far and wide, and there has been very little effort to keep in touch. But I had been reminded how easy it is to be forgotten forever. It only takes two generations and you are unknown, gone, a mystery on an old, hand-written document.

So perhaps I should try and connect. Make my daughter’s tree a little bit more colourful and green.

The Gift of Solitude

 

The ideal family holiday? Away from the family. Knowing that they are well and supposedly having a much better time than me – left here to look after pets, home, and work; I dropped them off at the airport with a light heart.

This spring, I had two weeks of not having to worry about other people. I could run my house just to accommodate myself and said pets. One of them is a quiet budgie, the other one is a dog. Easy.

I was looking forward to this for a long time. I don’t understand people who fear time alone. I would sometimes remember that I had been at my happiest when I had been single and lived alone. Most of my happy moments were when I was quite alone. High up in the mountains, or somewhere else but outside, and most of the time alone. Or surrounded by strangers. Also, living on my own has been important for happiness. Having a little nest that was only mine. Stretching on the first bed I’d ever bought, long and wide enough to fit my height, chosen by me, for me.

One of the things that has been hard to accept after I became a mother was being constantly needed and never alone. The first time I could have a bit of time on my own was strange, I felt weightless. I’ve also noticed that kids don’t see us as independent beings, they often don’t realize that we would like to do something on our own. And there is nothing wrong with being needed. Living with a family has more good moments than bad. Not living alone makes sense in many ways.

But I crave solitude. I am one of the women who wake up early so that I can carve some time that is mine. And when I realized that it would be cheaper and easier if my husband went to take care of family issues and life admin in his country of origin and have a holiday at the same time just with our child (that, at the age of almost eleven, should be able to survive his care), I was more excited than if I were to plan the journey for the whole family. I used to travel a lot. I don’t mind missing a repeat trip, especially when it involves a lot of dealing with not my favourite relatives. The funny thing is how many people were surprised about it as if it was strange. I used to do things on my own and I don’t find it strange to not do everything as a family. I sometimes think that as mothers and wives we are meant to melt into the background, be there for everybody else, but god forbid we were to breathe too loudly….

My time of solitude was good. I was still working and sorting things around the house, I didn’t have a complete shut-off, but it was still my retreat. Just the fact that I didn’t have to worry about anybody else, as long as the animals were fed, was liberating. Then I realized how much lighter was the housework, how little laundry was needed, how much less cooking (and all to my taste and no negotiating around vegetables) there was and after a good clean – the house was fine, I just needed to sweep around the entrances and by the bird cage. Liberating.

Writing, reading, watching what I wanted. Sleeping on my own. Stretching in my bed. Silence. Yoga Nidra played every evening before sleep, with no headphones necessary. The yoga course I had singed up for could have been done as I wanted, not when I could fit it in.

What had been most revealing was the fact that I didn’t need to change anything to be happy. I was doing what I would have done anyway, I didn’t want to be anywhere else or with other people. I had been where I was meant to be. Time to focus on me was the only thing that was different and special. Which, I guess, is a good sign. Being happy as I am is a good way to live.

Understanding

   I am sometimes amazed by how circular learning is. As with everything in life, it is a life-long, ever-evolving and changing process. You forget things, you change opinions, you realize connections, you deepen your knowledge, and you are never done. That is actually the good part. How interesting would life be if you were suddenly done? Now I know everything there is to know – what now? No, thank you. I would rather make a few mistakes, confirm what I know and add something new.

   When I opened my first book about yoga, aged about fourteen, I knew I was into something important. The book was from the library, full of nice photos, but did not say much about philosophy in particular, it was more about offering a different exercise regime. I knew straight away that this was more than exercise and that it would be in my life forever. And it is.

   I went through a lot of learning and will never stop. The practice is evolving. I am also happy to know that things that seem too far-fetched and strange will come to me when I am ready. Fourteen-year-old me was thinking that meditation was something weird and decided to push it aside. It took more learning, researching, thinking and trying to figure out that I needed to sit down to concentrate. Because meditation is a state. I may say that I meditate every day but I know that I am trying to concentrate enough to be ready to meditate. It might happen in this lifetime, or one of the next ones. Showing up every day and doing the practice is what matters. Doing it without expectations that are too high, without waiting for rewards, recognition, or praise, is at the core of the learning process. I do it because it matters.

   And there are some little surprises on the way. How many mornings do I look at my wandering mind and question whether I will ever make it still? And then, later, I experience clarity, find solutions to problems, and inspiration that springs out of nowhere. My mind works differently. On the physical side, some poses offer new insight after years of doing them. Suddenly, a little tweak makes me see and feel them differently. Now I get them. Some poses work all the time. Some go up and down. Some need a lot of work. When balances work, I know that my mind is clear and focused and that it will show during my day. And it does.

   Yoga isn’t about how you look when you do it, or how long, deep, high, or extreme you can go. There isn’t one right way. There is your way of doing things and your way of living your yoga. Showing up day after day is what counts. Understanding is knowing that I know nothing. Understanding is accepting that learning never ends and can come from unexpected sources. Understanding is standing still feeling like you are flying high up in the sky, seeing your life and your worries from a bird’s perspective.

Forgiveness

Forgiveness is often seen as a virtue, something that we should have and demonstrate so that we can show the world that we are indeed decent human beings. It isn’t easy. We can learn to say the right thing, and we can act as if we are over and above something, but in reality, we hold grudges, ponder, and analyse. Deep inside, we know that we didn’t really forgive.

Maybe it is because as with everything, outer limits and expectations are hard to meet. We need time to be ready. As with grief, when we are expected to move on, we can forgive in our own time, we are capable of doing it, but we need to be ready. And nobody knows when it might be. We may shake off our trauma and move on, or we may need (or want – why not?) to sit with it, take our time, and work with it. Dealing with our grudge, pain, and grief, or any other thing that society might consider unhelpful and undesirable, might be what sets us free in our own time.

Of course, having our pain and trauma as the thing that defines us isn’t good for anybody, but the preconception that life is supposed to be happy and good and only positive vibes are allowed is naive and, frankly, impossible.

Forgive and forget, they say. Again, why? What if we don’t want to? What if remembering the bad as well as the good is beneficial? The best lessons in my life were learnt from mistakes. Bad things are part of life, they are here to stay, and they are how we learn. To learn, we must remember. Fairy tales are nice, but life isn’t about overcoming one obstacle, defying one enemy, and living happily ever after. Life is up and down, circles of time, and people with baggage. In the baggage is a mixture of positives, negatives, neutrals, riches, losses, and things unforgotten and unforgiven. The baggage makes us what we are.

Life isn’t about forgiving and being virtuous and good. It is about understanding what happened and moving on when we can. Not a long time ago I read an interesting thing that prompted this post. I can’t recall the exact words but the message was: perhaps instead of forgiving what you can’t forgive, forgive yourself. And it was so liberating, even though, at the same time, I thought that I had already understood it somewhere deep inside but didn’t really say it like that, so clearly and nicely. Somebody hurt you, somebody did bad things to you, somebody took away a lot? And you are meant to forgive and forget? And you feel bad because you can’t? Don’t. It is okay. Let them live with what they had done, let them pay the price for it. Don’t go looking for a proof. Don’t reach out. Don’t let others force you into reliving it, talking about it over and over again. Instead, extend your kindness and virtue to yourself. Forgive yourself for not knowing better. Forgive yourself for allowing it to happen, for not reacting differently, not knowing what to say and how to say it, not knowing the right way to act, react, and move away. Look at yourself then, look at yourself now. You have learnt. Even if you thought it impossible, you had moved on. You know more now than you had known then. And you are forgiven. Extend your kindness and virtue to yourself. Know that at any time in your life, you have done the best you could have done, knowing what you had known, with the resources you had. Forgiveness is possible. And you can offer it to the most important person in your life: yourself.