Dear future hubster
Love notes to a yet unknown husband
Wednesday, January 1, 2025
Rise to find the sun
Friday, December 20, 2024
That (lovin') feelin'
Dear future hubster,
you know as much as anybody who's ever met me and paid attention that I spend a loooot of time searching for meaning. Almost as much time as I spend wondering what and where home is, and how I can make it where I am. Oh and also trying to resist the feeling of home when it starts approaching, because complicating my own life should be an Olympic sport.
And I know when it starts approaching, I recognise the signs, and I welcome them every time. Whether it's going to a concert venue three times in as many months, returning to the Christmas concert at the Danish church for the second time (doing anything annual for the second time really), being invited to a random theatre show because people know I'd be around, knowing a backup cocktail bar when the first we go to is closed, seeing a familiar face coming out of the metro because I see them on my Saturday morning runs in the park, knowing people at the office party, knowing people at the book club, knowing people, being known... that's how it begins.
And right now that's all I know. It has begun, and that's a good thing.
Tuesday, November 12, 2024
What was I made for?
Friday, September 6, 2024
There she goes again
Dear future hubster,
earlier this summer people kept asking me where I'm going for holidays, and depending on the level of small talk-ness of the interaction, I responded in more or less detail that I don't really have a lot of leave days because it's my first year in Belgium etc etc.
But then I started thinking and had to admit that even if I had the days, I wouldn't know what to do or where to go. In the past ten years since I left my home by the (Petrusse) river, my summer holidays consisted of The European Tour: a few weeks of couchsurfing between my friends and family, living out of a suitcase that infamously exploded in many living rooms, dropping keys in mailboxes as lousy part-time lovers, forgetting personal items of a great variety, as if wanting to leave proof that I was there.
So when I finally acknowledged that it would not do any good to anybody if I didn't I took a week and did what I do best: got on a bunch of trains and covered a thousand kilometers or two, invited myself to family holidays and family homes; due to some plant-aunt duties I even managed to drop a key in a mailbox. And of course I forgot a few personal items here and there.
What I also did was feeling both a sense of comfort, a familiarity, an odd freedom, gratefulness that I get to do this, and an unexpected almost-revelation. That of course I do a European Tour, this is who I am, showing up in the life of the people I love when I can.
I also learnt a few things (what good is a trip if it doesn't come with lessons?). I learnt that the European tour does get easier in the sense that it doesn't involve jet lag or overseas travel, and 1000+ km can be covered by public transport, (something I love and will never not praise). And that the European tour does not get easier in the sense that I get waves of sadness washing over me every time I leave a place and a group of people, and that I don't want to go back to doing responsible things.
And then when I did go back to doing responsible things, I learnt that there's beauty in that too. In the the back to school mood, in the office suddenly filling up again with people old and new, and in the joy of seeing them again, the comfort of the familiar.
Something I tend to fight, something that tends to happen anyway and then I tend to be grateful for it.
Sunday, June 9, 2024
Our house
Friday, June 7, 2024
There were moments of gold
Sunday, March 31, 2024
In all your damaged glory
Dear future hubster,
In this life I have that I might have chosen or that might have chosen me, it's easy to just get in the groove of things and just do do do (as opposed to [here comes the sun] dudududu). And while it's actually kinda often kinda hard to get into the groove of adulting when it's not exciting but rather daunting or just plain boring or involves having to interact with products and services that fail to deliver on the one function they were designed for, it is even harder to let go of the pressure to at least pretend having my shit together at presenting some semblance of order. Worrying about keeping my apartment tidy and my hair neat and my syntax correct and my clothes only moderately quirky because what if I suddenly have to impress somebody or justify taking up space.
And yes yes I know that those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind and all that jazz but first of all it's not always true and then even when it is, it's easy to forget.
But then! Then come the people who don't only shrug it off and genuinely don't care about the façade but who actually are here for the mess. Because unmatching earrings are fun, because when I say "we don't do perfect around here" they feel relieved that then they don't have to do it either, because they think that messy hair is healthy and jumbled up syntax is less important than meaning, and with all that quiet, adventurous acceptance they actually say "girl, who you are will always peak through any semblance of order" and then I remember that I always have clean cups to drink coffee from and there's always room and time to air out the happy and the sad and always for the hugs, and the way the tension leaves my body when they remind me that I can just be me and that's not just "okay" but it is a deliberate, powerful stance... if that's not love, I don't know what is.
But it is. Love, that is.