I'm going to take it as a compliment, in any case

Dear future hubster,
if someone tells me I look smashing, do they mean I look like I could smash things? People? Souls? Did they actually call me potentially kick-ass?

Not dating material

Dear future hubster,

I really hope you are a creative one, and have a solid plan for meeting me. Because here's a hint: that good (?) old dating thing ain't gonna work with me.

I'm not even sure I understand what "dating" means, but I do know the idea stresses me out. When I (finally) meet you, dear future hubster, I want to feel comfortable. I want it to be simple and relaxing. Ok, relaxing could mean that I'm screaming my lungs out because you took me to an amusement park and we are on a rollercoaster (excellent idea, by the way), or that I swear like a trucker (I'm no lady, you'd better get used to it), because my everything hurts because we are climbing a wall. Or because I can't figure out how to put together that sneaky piece of Ikea furniture, and NO! I don't need you to fix it for me. Just let me have my moment.  

But please, please don't put me in a situation where I have to dress up and go to some lovely restaurant and pretend I have manners. Don't get me wrong, I love dressing up and there is nothing wrong with lovely restaurants (I like food, too), and on occasions I can actually be well-mannered, but... _knowing_ that it's a date and I will be measured and evaluated is just terrifying. 

You will probably have to date me without me noticing. Or, you know, you could just... come home.  Honestly, if food has to be involved in my evaluation, we're both better off if I cook. 

Not everything is a twistcap

Dear future hubster,

I believe that every grown-up woman, regardless of social or marital status, skin or hair colour, sexual or mental disorientation, should be able to open the basic bottles without any help or trouble. And by basic I mean water, beer, wine, bubbly. Help may be asked in serious cases of jars. 

For Paris is a moveable feast

Dear future hubster,
silly it may sound considering all the places I can visit from my home base in the lands of eternal summer, sometimes, and recently more and more, I just unexpectedly miss Paris. Actually, and quite nostalgically, France as a whole.
Could we please meet there, take trains and walks and boats, travel the countryside, be together and have our books and at night be warm in bed together with the windows open and the stars bright?

A heart that hurts is a heart that beats

Dear future hubster,

can we please stop once and for all with all the BS about not getting hurt? It's an impossible hope and an ignorant goal. If you get involved, you get hurt. That simple. 

If you want it in a fairy tale framework, there you go: If we are really, really lucky, and this is for real and for happily ever after, one of us will still get hurt when suddenly the other one is gone. Nobody lives forever, I heard.

So if you didn't want to hurt me, or get hurt in the process, you shouldn't ever have come anywhere close me. Because the moment we decided we care, we accepted that sometimes it is going to be deeply painful. That's how you know you're still alive. Good old Bono said it himself. 

Even cases of man flu

Dear future hubster,

you should know that I am ready to take care of you whenever you're sick. I have tested my methods on the boys, and it has been proven: almost all health problems can be cured with ginger tea and/or pálinka.

And if those fail, there is always love.

Thy name is woman

Dear future hubster,

while it's safe to declare that I quite enjoy where I am, geographically and in a more figurative sense, sometimes, when I walk around in the other world, I look at the shop windows with a certain envy. (I almost lick them, as the French would say.) For brief moments I wish I lived and worked in a place that would justify more regular purchase of clothing items. Also, where I could wear a little shorter, a little tighter, a little bolder pieces from time to time, and still feel comfortable. 

Ah, the worries I have in this life.

#dailywisdom

Dear future hubster,
I have come to the conclusion that we can have the best of both worlds. Only that we have to put up with the worst of both, too.

I don't think of your smile

Dear future hubster,

your Captain Obvious future wife strikes again. And tells you how missing somebody feels.

Odd, that is.

Because you think you are prepared for it, you expect that big void somewhere at stomach level, and you are surprised and almost disappointed when you can't feel it. You are missing the void, really?

Thing is, it will kick you like being homesick kicks you in a supermarket, somewhere between the candy and the cheese aisle. Randomly, antipoetically, without quiet and sad background music.

You don't miss people 24/7. You miss them in situations they used to be present, and you expect them to be present in. You miss them when you wake up and they are not there, looking grumpy and not talking to you. You miss them when you wear something they used to love. Or make fun of. You miss them when you cook their favourite food; you miss them when you keep checking everything you buy to fit their allergies. You miss them when you make a stupid joke nobody else would understand; you miss them when you use an expression you picked up from them. Indeed. You miss them when you do something that used to drive them crazy; you miss them when you wash your bananas. And always keep your frisbee clean. You miss them every time, and painfully so, when you remember something you said once and you think hurt them and you never stopped feeling guilty for it, even though they probably wouldn't even remember the incident. You miss them when you see a movie they would enjoy; when you listen to music they couldn't stand. You miss them when you walk down a street where you used to spot them; you miss them when you go to their favourite bar. You miss them when you suddenly have a groundbreaking thought you want to share; you miss them when you want to tell them that a lady on the street complimented on your dress. And the guy wanted to sell you a painting of Martin Kobler. 

Basically, you miss them every time life reminds you that they are not where they used to be. That is, around you.

The Earth says hello

Dear future hubster,
sometimes it's worth getting up a little earlier and watch the world come alive for another day. Even though here the sun rises fast and almost unnoticed, there is something promising in the early hours. The air is cooler, the noise level is just starting to rise, the brave people jogging on the streets are a motivating sight, and the day is full of possibilities, because we haven't yet had time to mess it up. 

The right kind of pilot

Dear future hubster,

If I'm ever accused of never being fully satisfied with given situation, in certain cases I may have to plead guilty as charged.

It appears that while I certainly wish for some attention and feel unappreciated if I don't receive any, I also dislike and feel uncomfortable if there is too much of it, or if it comes from sources and in ways I didn't particularly wish for.

In other words: attention is flattering, but only if it comes from whom I want it to, the way I want it to, when I want it to.

I may be flexible in all other aspects.

What if there was no time

Dear future hubster,

sometimes I wonder whether you should be addressed as "Dear Could-have-been Hubster". 

Because there is a chance, and probably one that gets fatter every day, that by the time you and I meet, you will have grown tired of waiting for me and built up your pretty normal life with your pretty normal wife and pretty normal kids (optionally pretty normal dog), while I have been doing what felt right, or what felt the least wrong, or what I wasn't afraid of doing but wasn't dead bored thinking of doing. 

None of us has done it wrong, but doesn't it scare you from time to time that one day you'll be sitting there, hit by the sudden thought that "bam! she could have been the one!" and knowing too well that that boat is gone?

(Side note, albeit an important one: pretty normal is not something I could do.)

Strawberries, cherries, and an angel's kiss in spring

Dear future hubster,

where seasons change, where snow and rain and heat still come and go, where days get longer to get shorter again - summer nights smell different there. A hint of absolution for sins we don't remember, a taste of promises we have no intention believing, a glimpse of daydreams that haunt us in the midday sun. They smell like everything could be possible - if only we weren't so afraid.  

Don't mind the spelling

Dear future hubster,

at some point, there will be drunk texting. Or at least late night texting. It will be existential, philosophical, and most probably will make no sense to you, because I tend to leave out mildly important details - whom or what do I refer to, for instance. 

Nevertheless, it's important. The days when I randomly drunk texted just about anyone are long gone. Nowadays I only do it to people I trust, have something to say to, and, most importantly, think of late at night, drunk or not. 

From this place I love I've had enough

Dear future hubster,
Not having the faintest idea of where I'm going may be one of the most defining conditions in my life, but one thing has become clear recently: "back" is not a destination.