In some areas of our country there is a superstitious custom practiced by parents, when their children turn one year old. Until that date, the child's hair is not cut, so that at the age of one year it can be tied in a tail (at least the length of a duckling's tail) on the top of the head.
On the day the baby turns one year old, relatives and friends gather to celebrate the event with the little one's family. After everyone has eaten and drunk, when everyone is more relaxed, the child's godparents place various things on a table or on a tray. These things range from books to utensils, medical instruments or tools, toys, jewelry, money, metal objects, decorations and other trinkets that represent various professions. It is called "Cutting the Baby´s Tuft" Day, a custom practiced in the southern, south-eastern areas and in certain parts of eastern Romania. In our family, the custom became known through my father who originated from the south of the country. In the area, where my mother comes from, this custom was not known.
Why is this day so important for the child's family? Because, on this day, the child's destiny will be revealed to them: what exactly the child will choose to do in life, professionally, and as a vocation. The first three things touched or chosen by the child will also be those that will define his character and professional education, it is said.
The activity in itself can be downright funny. Sometimes the godparents, maybe a little too attached to the child, will want to dramatize a little, placing bets, before the little one has even approached the scattered objects, thus predicting how the “apple of their eye” will become this and that, will do this or that. The atmosphere in the room becomes tense, the child looks at everyone with big eyes, not understanding what is happening, everyone swallowing dryly, full of emotion, trying to anticipate the first movement of the tiny human being: what will be the first object chosen, will it fit with the dreams and desires of the family and godparents? Some lose the bet, others win. Overall, the event is just another pretext for Romanians to gather and have something to celebrate.
When I turned one year old, my parents did the same thing to me. They put before me a lot of objects to choose from. My parents used to say that I was a quiet but curious child, with big eyes, who studied everything that moved around. When I approached the table with objects, I stopped for a few seconds and looked with great amazement at all the things placed before me which I had never seen before. And, to the surprise of the ones gathered around me, I chose the following three objects: a hammer, a watch and a Romanian romance novel, entitled “Adela”.
After the little one chooses the three objects, his hair is cut off, being kept for posterity in a glass or crystal container, to remind the future adult of his first choices in life. It's like a first token of the first childhood days.
After they cut my tuft, which was tied with a ribbon, and put it aside as an offering, to keep it for the days to come, they left me to my own business, to play. At this point, what adults have to do is try to interpret the child's destiny based on the objects chosen by him. It is no easy task to interpret the choices of the little one, on the contrary, if somehow the grown-ups are wrong – which is very possible, because we are only human – the little one can become a real disappointment for the whole family. If, somehow, they are right, the little one can be a real blessing. Jokingly or not, each of those present takes turns giving their opinion, trying to guess, to decipher the meaning of each chosen object.
When I chose those three objects, my parents were amazed. Why would a little girl choose such a heavy and rough hammer, a labor tool workers usually pick to demolish something, hammer nails, or hit something hard with it? What about the wristwatch? And the romance novel?
Finally, after a few glasses of alcohol, people get dizzy, becoming very spiritual, losing interest in overly complex riddles.
Like any mother, mine also reflected long on my choices, keeping them in her own heart. She told me, the hammer would be the symbol of strength, of endurance. As a work tool, it can destroy and demolish things. From a temperamental point of view, my mother told me over the years that I was a very strong person, just like that hammer I chose, put to good use. My character traits also emphasize these things, these strengths in me.
In total contrast to the hammer, I chose a fine, meticulous and light filigree wristwatch. To my mother this showed my delicacy, my meticulousness, my gentle, kind and noble nature, my attention to detail, my punctuality and the fact that time has always been my greatest ally in almost all circumstances of my life. I have to admit, I'm not an early bird, never have been, to my shame – I don´t wake up early to start the day and get far, not always, to be frank. Likewise, certain very complex things, intricate ideas and confused or tangled processes I don't understand all at once, but in a very short time I catch up with others who understood them much faster than I and, sometimes, I even reach the finish line, way ahead of them, even before others have made it to the half of their lap.
When she came to the romance novel “Adela”, here mother became sad. The book is about a woman who marries and then divorces. My mother reminded me of these choices of mine after I had left the country where I got married, repatriating. The divorce had already been filed for and, as if for the first time in my life, my eyes opened wide, and I thought I saw certain connections with the book I had chosen when I was only one year old.
In my family, I was perhaps the only one who, since a little girl, was not very inclined to superstitions, even though I sometimes practiced them because that's what I was told to do. However, I couldn't help but think about what was happening in my life at that time, wondering if what I had chosen as a child had something to do with everything I was experiencing. What a mystery, I told myself. Is it possible that we, with our little hands, and from so early on, choose the steps we will take later on in life and the choices we should follow, long before we know anything about them, even before we find out that we have a free choice to make the most of? That would be impossible, I told myself.
Moreover, I was born in February, on a day dedicated to the idea of love and couples. Even as a child, I knew deep down that I had been born to love and be loved, but this idea seemed so vague to me at the time, in the long gone mists of my childhood. In the end, I came to the conclusion that, indeed, I am a strong woman, with very noble and delicate features, who can love and be easily loved. Proof? So many examples from my life, in which I was surrounded by people who considered me and treated me as a very easily lovable person. In no way did I want to recall the negative details superstitious people bring out, when they seem to find no explanation for their own predictions, prophecies and prognostications.
Not to mention that the name Adela really means noblewoman in Old German. Incidental variables, right? That's what I used to tell myself, too.
But hear me out here: once upon a time, it was believed that somewhere up there, in the pantries of the incomprehensible universe, a handful of women sat, spinning the spindle of history and the destinies of humanity. They were called Ides. All peoples had them, under one form or another. Some called them witches, others fairies. But whatever they were, their job was to manipulate our destinies, at least that's what was believed since old. However, somewhere in the human soul, it was still believed that there was nothing that could change or reverse what had been already written about you before you were even born, probably from eternity. Could it be really so?
Fairy tales to fall madly in love with
I go back to my childhood, a fountain of much wisdom, because it is full of suffering and unmet needs. I started reading when I was four years old. A precocious, curious child, who had too much curiosity to explore the world around. Because I used to be restless at times, my family needed to give me something do to. When I got my hands on my first fairy-tale books, the eyes of this little girl widened like onions. The Russian and Romanian stories and fairy tales brought home by my mother and on which I scribbled my personal signature remained deeply imprinted in my conscience as a little girl. They were the first images that still unfold today like a slide film in my memory: beautiful young virgins and strong men, in love with each other, fighting together against evil creatures. But the most wonderful phrase of all, which has always anointed my soul like honey on the muzzle of the hungry bear coming out of the winter den, was: And they lived happily ever after... It was the eternal promise that would never be broken. The seal of that fairy tale.
Of course, when you're a child and you barely manage to utter a few words and add two with two, not yet understanding why it has to be four, you can't question the last sentence of a story with a happy ending. That phrase, which sounds like a mantra with an eternal echo, is as if carved, like God´s commandments, in solid rock. Not to mention that, being written in the indicative, in the perfect compound tense, it assumes that things already unfolded. They are not conditioned by anything, they have already happened, so time does not return, events are nailed down, they cannot be reversed anymore.
They happened. End of story. To the mind of a child, these words become holier than life itself. And no one has the right to intervene with questions that raise doubts in the minds of readers, such as: In what way did they live happily ever after? Did they live with their parents of in-laws? Who earned the bread in the family? He, she or both of them worked hard? Did they share the expenses? Did they live in a spacious castle and use all the rooms in it or just a few of them? Did they have a garden, a backyard, pets? Where did they procure their daily food from? From the fair or from the supermarket across the street? And others alike.
It is known that fairy tales and stories were invented for this purpose by the human mind put to the test by heavy suffering, struggle, unfulfillment – namely to have no impediments in successfully completing the thread of action. After all, it is said that a fairy tale is woven by fairies, not by accountants or engineers, it is not a receipt or an invoice. It is a collection of magic words that have the expected effect – at least from a technical and medical point of view – of increasing the blood pressure of those who are emotionally anemic, of increasing the amount of happiness cells overall for those who do not experience devastating emotional tidal waves in their lives. These words spoken and, later collected and crafted, have the clear purpose of making you happy, like an automaton.
If they fail, then fairy tales needn´t exist, right? Myths would disintegrate and the whole scaffold, on which we build our hopes, would totally collapse, and we would go down with it. I sometimes tell myself that God is far too merciful, letting us indulge in, being lied to, and hypnotized by our own unshakable beliefs, because, if He didn't allow them, we would certainly have a nervous break-down.
The mission of fairy tales is to sweeten all the rot the world offers, otherwise the fruits of this world would not be pleasing to the eye to eat. Does this similarity tell you anything? Doesn't it sound like the story in the Genesis, when our proto-parents took a bite of that fruit that seemed pleasing to their eyes and tasty, and then they got sick, seeing themselves thrown into the whirlwind of the cruel reality of falling into lies?
But I strayed too far from my path. After all, we have to survive somehow, to reach an average age of at least 72 (for women) and 74 (for men), according to statistics – and you can't do it, if this life is too miserable and stinky, right?
For everyone, without exception, life is so cruel sometimes that, if it weren't for fairy tales and stories with happy endings, I, at least, would have literally lost my mind. The fairy tales, those corny love stories were for me the mother who held me to her breast and from whose breast I sucked with so much thirst that which the women in my life did not give me.
The attachment style – that bond you have with creatures later on as an adult – is formed by the child from the relationship with the mother. My mother didn't breastfeed me at all, she stayed with me for three months – the fate of many children of my generation – she left me with my grandparents. I was given a stuffed animal or a fine fluffy blanket and I was told to grow up! It was also said, at that time, not to kiss your child, except in his sleep, lest we would become too spoiled. And so we weren't pampered, not to mention loved, but malnourished, a generation that later, in adulthood, ended up stealing from who-knows-where and taking something out of nothing to fill the hole that didn't stop growing inside, literally eating at us. This is a social sin I fully condemn. I don't condemn my parents, because they also copied what they saw at home and did what they were told. But, alas, man is capable of a false fidelity, even to death...
All these things had to be a guarantee of the fact that I was fully loved, especially in the moments when, from the outside, no confirmation of this idea came. They were the milk I didn't get, the shoulder on which to fall asleep crying, the friend who wanted me as I was, unchanged and so changeable. My dream, my vocation, maybe even my destiny from all eternity, or? Isn't that what I had chosen from the very beginning? Love written in books?
What I put on paper now sounds somewhat far-fetched, exaggerated, elevated to the rank of idol. You're right, that's what it is. My idol, my almighty god, my first love, my first husband, my first lover. The first one I loved as I have never loved anyone until this moment as I sit to write these lines. If you like, it is my declaration of love that I put on paper for the greatest love of my life: love itself, fairy tales, love stories, romance novels. Oh, how much I loved you and how much I chased you! And how much you lied to me! I was in love with you, vapors that you are! Chimeras, dreams, illusions that brought me so much nothing and emptiness...
My interior castle
Those who live anchored in reality do not covet the sugar powder of the fairies. But children who live a harsher reality at home, which leaves traces on their emotional bodies, will despise reality more than the Sandman himself, finding their way out of it by escaping into their own world, where any dysfunctional creature is immediately put to death, the kingdom freed from ghosts and restored and the heroes manage to save everyone, without exception. The End. Happy End.
I hated reality more than anyone can imagine that such a young child like me could end up hating it. It was more unbearable for me than all the phobias and fears I had developed as a child. Home meant always being under siege, where a bomb could explode at any time, destroying any remnant of that enchanting and still so fragile peace that, to top it off, everyone in the house longed for.
How many wars are not made for peace! So in a fairy tale. The characters fight against creatures that threaten to destroy their lives and those of their loved ones. We always have a big fight. One last threshold to cross. And, after that, everything is restored to the original order left by the Good Lord since the beginning of time. But even when I was a child, I asked myself the same question: Why don't these things end, why isn't there a lasting peace, why are worries, quarrels and aggression not resolved, those daily struggles that strangle us like the arms of a huge octopus?
At the age of eleven I already had a clear vision of life: miserable, sad, depressing, unjust, abject and despicable, filthy, more bitter than wormwood, and agonizingly painful. Perhaps precisely because I thought this way about life that the heavens bent over me, allowing me to find a way out of my miserable early adolescence. But I came out of an evil tangled labyrinth, only to end up in an even darker one – I got to know what became my one and only love of a lifetime: the genre of historical romance novels.
As long as I live, I shall not forget that fateful day. As if it were just yesterday. During my lunch break at school, I left the main building, heading to the school library building, to borrow a geography book I needed for a project. Walking by the shelves, trying to find the geography section, I passed by the prose and fiction section, at which point the colorful covers of some books sparkled like diamond dew in the morning, immediately capturing my attention. I stopped and picked up a book from the shelf. I was very surprised, when my eyes inspected the cover, which was a real mirage, more beautiful than the images from the fairy tales I had known as a child: two people, most certainly the main characters of the book, I thought to myself, an extremely handsome man and a woman of extraordinary beauty were immortalized in such a sensual and alluring embrace! The story seemed to be set in the Middle Ages, so it seemed to me. But what hypnotized me instantly was the way the two looked at each other, as if they had known each other since the beginning of time, as if their mutual trust was undeniable, inexpugnable.
I had never seen anything like that before, not even between my parents. And that image spoke to my soul so shadowed and hungry, with such a strong impact on my still-forming personality, that I borrowed the book and took it home with me, not realizing at the time that I had invited the enemy into my life. That's how I started building at my inner castle, weaving vain illusions of love told by others who, in turn, may be looking for the same illusion to become one with the reality, yet they may never have known it personally. I, for one, hadn´t.
It's easy to be brave from afar, so says a proverb. From behind a pen, any great writer can tell stories about LOVE that – let´s be upfront about this! – is made, not spoken of or written about. And, let's be real, these books are packed with elements that almost scream out loud and clear: co-dependency, abuse, trauma, falsehood and lies.
Addictions & Co.
All women have a personal obsession. Some are crazy about clothes, others about shoes, others about jewelry, and again others about all of them together. To each their own, as they say. But my only passion, my unique love, which didn't take long to turn into my drug, my vice, my everything, remaining my sin for almost 20 years, was the genre of romance novels. When I leafed through my first romance novel, it was like listening to choirs of angels tickling my ears. Finally, God, inexplicably, had seen my anguish, my hunger after a change, love, peace and rest, understanding and happiness, that's how I had thought. God had made me happy, that was my conclusion. Was it really God who pushed me into the arms of my enemy?
From that day on, I devoured novels on a daily basis, just as a heavy smoker smokes maybe at least one pack of cigarettes a day. I read a little two or three volumes a day! First all the novels from the school library, then the ones on the shelves of the county library, then those from the shelves of the bookstores in the city, I read them all.
When I ran out of options, thank goodness, the mothers of some of my classmates offered me their books from their own book shelves at home. I spent hours, days, even nights, devouring them with a speed I had never been capable of before. I spent my school breaks reading my novels. And, hungry as I was, the more I read, the more I felt that I couldn't get enough of them, and the hunger was terrible. Terrible! Those books gave me a unique happiness. I sometimes wonder even today, if those books didn't have incantations made on them, like so many pieces of literature on witchcraft and occult, which are said to be downright impregnated with black magic, just to catch you and never let you go. Their power of seduction is far too great for a mere ordinary mortal to resist them, they have almost superhuman power. If I could go back in time to get back all the money I had spent on those books (almost 10K), I would become filthy rich, without exaggerating, that it would not be necessary for me to work another bitter day in my entire life. I´m not kidding!
Interestingly, my brain recorded the images on the cover of each novel, but never the names of the novels. Titles and names are useless, after all; it is the substance that teaches you, guides you and nourishes you. That's because no one – not at school, not at church, in society, or even in the media – has taught me what love is. This literary genre became my beloved teacher, instructing me in the art of love, seduction, intrigue, and immortal happiness. But even so, to this day I have no idea how to flirt, seduce or attract a normal and healthy relationship into my life. I know how to tease a man to see what he is capable of, but this lesson was also learned much much later on in life, after I went through the mill. Isn't that ironic? Especially after so many bitter years of study?
The more I read, the hungrier I became. It was as if my soul had no bottom. It's a terrible feeling. It seemed to me that I was losing my mind, if I did not read even a few pages of such a novel. These novels were always by my side when I needed them most: when I was bored and when I couldn't close an eye at night; when my fantasy ran out of fuel and failed, especially for my literary projects at school; when I was sad and unhappy, unfulfilled, unwanted, undesired, despised, bypassed, when I could not live up to the expectations of the partners I loved; when school, college or life itself were too demanding, when I was tired, without a direction in life, but especially when I felt so alone, so empty and so deserted inside. Not even pornography or touching a man had ever had the effect on me that these novels produced. They were unbeatable. And I loved them, because they didn't judge me, they didn't criticize me, they didn't upset me, they didn't ask me for god-knows-what difficult tasks, they didn't abandon me, they didn't reject me. How much loyalty on their part!
That loneliness that gnaws at you like a worm inside... and which becomes an insatiable monster, a fire dragon that devours you like a torch, consuming every fiber and cell left, all your energy. It drains you of all hope, giving you the cure of death, drop by drop, but it never makes you feel alive or the feeling that you might burn, illuminate, that you could float lightly like a feather on the wings of the wind, that you could be one with the universe. What a deceitful love! And it was in the arms of this love that I found refuge. On the chest of a man who loves unconditionally, irreproachably, being ready to jump into fire or water, into battle or into the mouth of a dragon to free you, to die for you, so that you could stay alive. However, knowing that he could cause you terrible anguish and that he could grieve you by dying for you, he would be endlessly careful not to die, while still saving your skin. On the contrary, he would stay alive, making you the happiest woman on earth.
Love stories are invincible. And love is a real mess today! It's dirty, chaotic, perverse, disgusting. Can anyone blame me for thinking like that? After all, that's what such books teach you: when you close the book, hell awaits you outside. And outside, your father, whom you look up at as your hero doesn't want your mother. Your hag of a mother doesn't want your father. And your brother is trying so hard to copy you, and he has to be tamed, like a fire dragon must be tamed, lest he disturbs.
So you don't close the book, you leave it open, you stay in the story, like in a dungeon, from which you don't want to be released. Your only happiness is to stay there, to be swallowed up by that story, where you can be either a butler, a maid, a peasant woman or even the mistress of the castle, if not her love prospects. Whatever role you assign to yourself, the idea is to stay there, not to leave the game. Staying in the story is not difficult at all. When you have to get out of it, even for a little while, that's the hardest part. That's why, when the story ends, a new one follows, the inheritance prolonging this slow death of the being. Because this is what is brings, death, without excuses. It is the death of the soul and of the personality.
Back to my first love
After my failed marriage, I ended up returning to my first lover: the romance novels. It is said that you never forget your first love. In my case, this statement is true. I confess with shame and humility that, during my marriage, although I did not consume such literature, when my ex-husband showed me how much he despised me, my first thought ran to my first lover, the romance novel. Because he coveted me, he wanted me with an ardor with which I also wanted my ex, although I couldn't touch him.
On nights of great loneliness, when I couldn't close an eye, listening to the breath of the man lying next to me, who slept with me in the same bed, yet not as a husband, but rather as a roommate with whom, you would have said, I shared a rent, because I did not have any romance novel on me, I tried to remember at least one of the thousands of novels devoured by me before I got married. And I would lose myself among the characters, images, the tangled thread of the stories, deepening the wound of rejection and abandonment in my heart.
As much as such writings sicken me today, after going through the healing program and coming out of the swamp, this genre was my first man. Illegitimate, if you will, but he was my very first. Before I knew a man, in the way the Bible describes that a man knows a woman, I sinned and committed fornication with these graphic romance novels. And yes, the most delicious part has always been the one, in which the man knows his woman physically. The part was as sacred to me as Holy Scripture itself, perhaps even more so than the holy book. The emotional tension, the bond between the two, the union and unity that I have never experienced, not even in my own marriage – reason for which my religious marriage is considered invalid – have always been my goal. That creative union from which everything that is beautiful, lively and sacred is born.
It is terrible, when you eventually discover how far you have come, without even having tasted that friendship, unity and love between a man and a woman these books describe with such accuracy and plasticity. The English term for intimacy literally means to see into me, see into my depth, into my abyss. The truth – that no one has been able to bend down to take even a look into the depths of my soul – is so painful that it breaks my heart! That same castle, the edifice on which I built my life, collapsed with the force of an earthquake of the greatest magnitude imagined. And the remnants left behind from the old kingdom were swallowed up completely by the sea waves or were blown away by the wind in the four corners of the earth. But where was my hero to come to my aid, to save me, to free me? Where was my father, my hero, whom I kept waiting for?
The final divorce from my first love
When I first tried, deliberately and with therapeutic intent, to free myself from these chains, I felt like I was going through a renewed death. How many times can a human being die? How many times can one be consumed, like the Phoenix bird, the firebird, which is swallowed by its own flames and awakens from its own ashes? This time, however, the death was more violent than ever. It was neither slow, nor gentle. It was an inner carnage. Similar to when a baby is weaned, forcibly taken away from the most delectable life-giving nipple, from the warmest of breasts. Or maybe worse, when it is taken out of the mother's womb, at birth. I remember begging God to leave me at least one novel, just one, not more. But I felt that he had not consented. And because I obeyed, I was able to heal. Of course, healing is a lifelong process. So I'm still recovering. But my wound is like a visible tattoo. When that terrible loneliness and that horrifying and frightening feeling of rejection and abandonment hold me tight, I notice my former mortal wound, and I return, even if only in thought, to certain books that I only vaguely remember now (from the multitude of thousands and thousands I had read, without exaggerating their number). It's what I knew best, what I grew up with, my only known and experienced intimacy with these stories.
In a way, what made me kneel, out of desperation and submission to the higher power, and leave my master behind, was the fact that, at a certain point, already at an advanced stage of healing, I could not feel the physical pleasure anymore. That wonderful feeling – caused by a cocktail of dopamine, neurotrophins, serotonin, and adrenaline – was gone, which alarmed me more than anything else. And when happiness is no longer emanated by novels that produce so-called happiness (whose sole purpose is, indeed, to induce the feeling and vibration of happiness), pure pain, like a heavy metal, and the emptiness felt are exactly where they should be, unhindered by other characters to mask or hide their presence. It's a magic game here. My novels made pain, loneliness and emptiness disappear at once, like a rabbit disappears inside a magician's topper.
The impact of pain, of the wound of abandonment and rejection, the feeling of not being wanted and loved by my parents, by friends or colleagues, by my ex-husband, crushed me with a force similar to that with which an asteroid hits our planet. Too violent to be able to be described and experienced and, if the One above had not supported me, I would surely have literally snapped. The human body cannot endure such vehement abstinence, if it is not supported. Because, at that time, I no longer had any support pillars, I was homeless, and my emotional edifice had crumbled. The fields around my inner castle were burned, as was the abomination of desolation. And death simply refused to come and take me.
Moreover, when I thought of a possible relationship with a man, I was unable to imagine any kind of closeness with such a specimen, since, no matter how fine he was, he never corresponded to the description of men in my romance novels. He had to be not only handsome and attractive, but also strong, brave, able to protect the woman he was in love with. And there had to be ONLY ONE woman in his life. Until death did them part. Perhaps the only novels that came closest to the ideal image I had of a man were those on the indigenous peoples of America. Somehow, these men had to be like… like my father: handsome, kind, strong, reliable and loyal to the chore.
And I will live happily ever after
Asked once at school what I would like to become when I grew up, I used to answer that I would like to become a novelist. I was not so much interested in the fame gained as a writer, but more in the vocation of translating the words coming from the heart for those who do not read them in depth. However, out of shame I did not detail my answer, because my hidden desire was, in fact, to write about great immortal love stories that would amaze the reader. Things that have never been written by any other writer of such literary genre.
I was ashamed to admit my love for these books, my love for love itself. Because that's what it really was: I loved the idea of love. I was in love with love itself. And this is exactly what I wanted to offer to the world, what I, too, had already received, the words of eternal bliss, so that the world could heal, so that it would stop being mean, frantic, aggressive, violent, arrogant and always so very angry. I wanted to offer them, just like the Chinese rabbit of the zodiac that represents me so well, the elixir of life this fluffy animal holds in its paw, the liquor of peace and love. I smile even now when I think of the idealism I was imbued with. At such a young age I breathed such grandiose ideas...
If I think about it, I don't believe that in my heart I have really given up on this mysterious dream of mine. I haven´t really. I still hope to write things for posterity that really have a healing effect, that share wisdom, that make at least one person in this world smile, feel joy, and resonate with what I write in these humble lines. To scatter rubies to the faint-hearted, just as I had stolen all of my mother´s jewels and given them to the children in kindergarten, when I was only five years old (on that story in another article). And God kept His promise to me. He made me want something that He really fulfilled for me. Now I'm really writing. The pen is in my hand. I write my own story, my own fairy tale, every day when I wake up with the thought that, today, I will live to make it up to myself, when I make a conscious choice to rewrite my life, my destiny, even my own happy ending, when I spin the thread of my destiny the other way around.
I write articles that touch so many hearts and move so many things in the minds of so many readers, who open them to look for the wisdom hidden behind the pain, for the promised gems growing under the thick layers of so much dirty mud, behind a lifelong suffering caused by my own executioner's hand, because I had believed that, if no one loved me, I would love myself. That's right, I loved myself, but I loved myself in a wrong and destructive way. I have always had the ability to love myself, it had been given to me by My Creator Himself, but I loved myself with so much hatred, almost to my own total destruction. Like the legendary firebird.
Now that I have finally understood how I should love myself and to what extent I am able to get hold of the object of my love, I can honestly write about it. My life is, indeed, a fairy tale to read and to fall in love with.
And as long as I have a freedom of choice, no Ide, witch or fairy, no ogre or unicorn can steal my right to choose, to pick my own path, to choose my destiny. To write my own ending. And even my own happy ending. This is how I defied the stars and dismissed the Ides of February. They were too cold for my taste anyway. I dismissed not only them, but also all the princesses and princes in shining armor, all dragons and hags. The way those Ides would have written and spun the thread of my life story was a bit too brutal for me, like a hammer smashing a fine and delicate filigree wristwatch. And to you, “Adela”, I say good bye and good riddens! You're really not my type! Haha!