Today would have been your birthday. 70 years old… that’s quite an age. You would have become an old man today. You would have come to a grandpa age – at least in my eyes. I mean, I don’t really think that I would have been able to see you like this, but when I say 70, that is how I perceive it..

You would have lived to get old… What a privilege that is, I only see now..

It’s been 11 years and a half since you flew away to another realm that the living don’t get to travel to.. They were some hard 11+ years, not gonna lie. Actually, maybe the beginning wasn’t that bad. Or it was and I don’t remember well. But things definitely got more complicated in the past 6 years.  Maybe it is because a barely 17 years old kid couldn’t comprehend the hugeness of losing a parent. “Comprehend”… is not like not understanding – coz at 17 you are old enough to know what death is. But you are not old enough to be able to live through that pain. I think teenage years are a tricky period. Cuz you don’t have the blessing of ignorance, of not fully getting what is happening. Yet, you are not developed enough to be able to cope with it. And the sad part: the adults around you perceive you as old enough. They have the impression you are “self-sustainable”, emotionally or mentally talking. But I can tell you, I was not.

I don’t think I realized AT ALL that your loss affected me FOR YEARS. Many, many years after, it occurred in my mind that everything is linked with that. That life stopped making sense in that moment.

And in less than 10 years, more than half of the family moved to your realm. We are less than a half left here.. That’s a lot of loss to take. And I realized – only recently – that I don’t know how to take loss. I don’t know how to “digest it”, how to process it. The loss of all of you still lives inside me, untouched, and unfelt (consciously). Only subconsciously directing my life.

I defined myself through your loss. I took it as part of my identity. I took the loss as being an essential, fundamental part of me. And that is not a good thing..

I identify with the fact that my father died. I equate that with what it means to be me. I put it as part of my person now. I wanted to say as part of my “personality”, but that is not correct: I put it as part of my identity – and that influences everything, including even my personality.. What a sad thing..

It seems like if I give up on the feeling of loss, if I give up on identifying myself with your death .. It feels like I don’t know how to hold on to you in any other way.. It seems like that means actually losing you – for good. It’s like if I let you go, and I accept that that’s part of life – it seems like than I don’t have anything to link me with you anymore..

These days I got more in touch with this topic. I got more in touch with myself actually, this is “this topic”. I got more in touch with what’s inside me.

And that’s actually cool – I realize it now: it is one year ago today that I feel it’s the start of everything. Last year on your birthday it all started. And here I am, 1 year later.. I changed in this time more than in all the previous 10 years together. It’s been a hard work. But also beautiful. Rewarding. Fulfilling.

But definitely tough. All the amount of pain. Of sadness. Of loss, as I said.

I think now I kind of identified myself with the pain, with the actual feeling of loss for you.

Well, it seems like it is the same, but it is completely different: until now, I identified myself with the fact of losing you. The concrete fact that my father died. Now, something changed: I identify myself with the feeling of loss, with the suffering for my father lost. Before, I used to not have any contact with this feeling at all. Like my body protected me from feeling something so big, so overwhelming, so drawning – something bigger than I can withstand. But now, since I started digging deeper and deeper into myself, the feeling appeared. And I can actually completely understand why my body wisely decided to keep me away from all of this.

But now, my life is not fulfilling anymore as it is. I am tired of always being sad, angry, unfulfilled, alone. God, if not anger is the feeling that replaced all the painful feelings that I couldn’t feel. The amount of anger I felt.. unbelievable. I was angry at the world, upset at the world. Nothing is fair, nothing is good..  

Now, maybe there is again a period of this feeling of anger and outrage rising up from within me. But I guess somehow in another shape. I don’t really know. But now, we don’t talk about the very specific feeling in this very moment – for the moment, I update you on the story of life.

I said about anger. But that is not the start actually.  

The start is that I idolized you. For many, many years. I put you on a pedestal. Then I got very angry at you, and put mom on a saint place. Then I got.. kind of indifferent to you, and got outrageous towards mom. Well, there is more to it than just this, but.. I don’t know how to elaborate on it now. Actually.. yeah. I don’t know. Maybe ultimately I just became totally angry at everyone: you, mom, all the living beings around me, life, the world, everyone, everything.

Now, I guess that working with the anger means getting to feel other feelings, much more unpleasant. Cuz they hurt. Pain. Sadness. Hurt. Suffering. Dispair. I don’t even know – it is a surprisingly wide range of hurting feelings apparently.

It seems like anger is just an easier feeling to feel – at least for me. This is why it accompanied me for so long. I don’t know when it entered so subtly my life, but before I knew, anger became who I was. I was like a ball of anger rolling around life, spreading my fire and bitterness all around me, on a huge radius. I guess all those around me got to dislike me – but it was also reciprocal: I also got to dislike everyone. I also got to not have friends anymore in this period – quite intuitive from the story. So here comes also the aloneness. And loneliness. I guess maybe loneliness was the hurting feeling that accompanied me all this time, hand in hand with anger.

Oh. And I am forgetting to mention a big part of it all: a long chain of unfulfilling situationships. Haha, “situationships” – I don’t think that’s a term in your times. I don’t think you are familiar with the concept – but I mean.. maybe this exists since forever but with other names? Or maybe it is the new generation’s broken “dating” strategy? No idea haha. Anyway, I don’t want to enter the topic now. But yeah, during all this time, there is also this significant part: falling in the arms of someone, trying to feel less lonely I guess, not knowing how to build a proper, fulfilling relationship – but also staying in contexts I didn’t feel good, just so I wouldn’t be alone with myself. And in the try to feel less lonely – a failed attempt by the way, cuz I kept feeling lonely.

And of course, the leitmotif of my life: feeling lost. “Not knowing what I like”, “not knowing what I want to do with my life”, “not doing anything”, “letting life pass near me”. “Not knowing who I am anymore”, “not knowing what happened to me”. “Wanting to find my spark back”. “Where is the bubbly girl I used to be?” “Wanting to find myself back”. “Wanting to discover what I like and what I want in life”. “Wanting to get back at being myself…”

Turns out, what happened to me is just a long chain – and a long time – of unprocessed loss and pain.

But now things are different. I am tired of living constantly feeling so poorly. So now I am working on “finding myself”. Well, now I don’t really think that that’s the case anymore – I am actually working on “creating myself”.

It seems to me like we cannot get back at being how we used to be – but I can build who I am now, encapsulating how my life actually is and becoming how I would like to be. What I mean is: as nice as it would be, I cannot get back at having a complete family anymore. So now, indeed, this is part of how life actually is. But I can build myself to be as I want, encapsulating all my life experiences.

So now I am on my journey (bleah, the cliché) to discover my inner world, to see what in there that I ignored and overlooked for so long. I am looking at the adaptations and coping mechanisms that my body built to help me deal with a reality too big for my small self. I am looking at these adaptations that indeed, they kept me safe, but now they don’t help me anymore, as they also keep me small. So now I am trying to be gentle with myself – that’s a very hard one btw, as easy (or again cliché) as it sounds. To hold myself. I am on my way of learning to like myself fully as I am – also a hard one, as we all have parts about ourselves we highly dislike, and as a consequence, we try to hide these parts. It’s hard to see the parts that you feel so ashamed about. It’s hard to look at them. To acknowledge that such parts exist within you.

But this comes with great rewards. It seems like once we acknowledge these parts, once they feel seen, they stop fully controlling our life. They are still there, of course. But.. we just live a bit more peacefully in symbiosis.

Oh, and shame. That is a HUGE topic for me. Also a very sensitive one.  And a very difficult one.
I am looking at my beliefs, and I am trying to discern what I actually agree with and what I don’t. I am trying to define who and how I want to be. I mean, “who” is simple: I want to be me. I want to fully be me.

But that is also not that easy: because it seems like my identity took a lot from you. And even more, from my sister. So now I am trying to separate: to discover, who I am, if I detach for what you are.

To sum it up: what I am doing in this period is defining my identity.

I got to realize recently that what happened is not that difficult to define actually: I lost my identity. With your death, I lost my identity. From here come most of the struggles. It is not just the pain and your loss – the big problem comes from the loss of my own self, my own identity.

So now, I am in a beautiful period of “in between”: I am no longer the kid I used to be – but I also didn’t fully create my own identity yet.

Of course, I feel it took me too long. 11+ years I see it as way too long. Of course I wonder why for me it took so much, when everyone else around me seems to recover much faster. Of course I wonder how it took me so much to even realize what was happening – and even start to shed off my old identity, in order to be able to embody a new one, that represents who I am now.

There is this universal “wisdom” that “time heals everything”. Or that ”things will get better”.  For me that’s shit. I highly don’t agree with it. For me, time didn’t heal anything. And nothing got better – quite the opposite: from year to year, I got to feel worse. Things didn’t get better by themselves: they only started to get better when I, consciously, put a whole load of work and energy and effort into it.

Maybe I am bitter – again with the “it’s unfair” feeling. Why did it take me so long? Why for others it does get better by default and for me it didn’t? Why others can get along with their life and I remained stuck in time? And of course, as shameful as this feels to me, the truth is that I feel envious: envious that for others this “wisdom” seems to be true, and for me it was not. That’s why I consider it shitty: because I feel envious about it.

There is also a little part of me that thinks if everyone else actually gets better by default, without putting the effort – or all the pain is just buried and unseen? Well, it is true that their life seems more functional, but also how it seems from the outside and how it actually is – these are very different things. And of course, there is also the part where my life, from the outside, seems like at least a good life, if not a dream life. I mean, for many. But maybe it also seems not functional. Well, that’s an entire topic in itself. Not for now.

And lastly except the envy and the little questions – there is one more thing about this, also a shameful one: I also feel.. pejorative somehow. I feel a sense of superiority, of arrogance, of “I am better” – because I put the effort towards rebuilding myself, compared with the ones who just got better by nature. But in reality, this feeling is a cover-up feeling. It is something to make me feel better about myself, when there are all these feelings of envy and unfairness and “why others could and I couldn’t” and “why it took me so long” and “why I am so behind”.

Funny are the paths of the mind.

Anyway, if I leave aside the part where I compare myself with others (I know, I know, a killer of happiness, not helping anyone bla bla – I don’t even know at this point how is it possible not to compare, but I’m getting there, it is a part of me that will improve at a point). So again, if I leave aside the comparison with others, I actually feel proud of myself for how far I got. I feel proud of myself for all my work. I feel fulfilled about it. I am genuinely astonished by the beautiful parts I found inside myself. By the beauty of the feelings – even the heavy ones, they have a beauty and a purity inside them. I am impressed of how I actually got to be a much gentler person to myself. I feel infinite pride about being able to stay with my tough emotions and hug myself and provide safety for myself. Safety – another important topic for me these days, maybe even crucial, maybe the fundament of my work right now. But yes, I feel deeply grateful that I arrived to a point where I can provide myself a bit of a safe space. Not all the time, not fully – but I walked a long way.

 After a very, very long time, I do feel fulfillment, really. I feel content with where I am now. Now I don’t feel it is a lost time anymore – because I see myself going somewhere. I see myself moving. If before I was feeling like I am floating somewhere above the earth, and my whole life is in standby, now I feel that my life started. Now I feel that I am living! And I am very excited about it.

I don’t know how to explain it: I still feel very sad. I feel very hurt. I feel.. life many times feels unpleasant. But if I actually stop for a second from the daily feelings an think of how I see myself now – than yes, I have a great sense of content, and gratefulness for how long I’ve come and for how beautiful this period actually is, despite how heavy it feels. I guess it sounds weird, but yeah, as sad and painful as it is, it is also extremely beautiful that I can feel all of this and feel myself and explore and get in touch and grow and bloom and .. wow. It si just wow.

This is a very long letter haha. Didn’t expect that for sure. And the funny part is that I don’t even know if I said anything of what I wanted to say. Why did I even start writing? What I wanted to tell you? No idea haha. And it’s also funny because I said so much, yet it is so much to say, that it seems like I didn’t say anything at all.

But now, that I also told you about the present, it feels like it makes more sense. I want you to know that I am doing much better. And that it is still a work in progress – so I know I will get soon to be able to simply say “I want you to know that I am happy”, and not have any “but” to add to it.

Oh, and something nice as well: I started to get a glimpse of what I like. Even if I was not purposely trying this, it somehow happened. And writing is one of these things.  I love writing.  And I would love to do something with it.

This is why I am trying to create my own website – a place where I can post my writings. And actually, in the past 3 days, I worked on it, I tried to build it. In reality, I bought the domain 6 months ago – specifically on my birthday. But a few days ago it came in my mind that okay, I really want to launch it so I can bring my writing to the light of the world. And now, today, on your birthday, it would be a very beautiful moment to launch it. I would love to do that. And actually, I realized this is the reason why I started to write to you today – to tell you about this haha.

 The truth is I got a bit stuck with the website – because I create it myself. And yeah, I am not a professional. That’s an underestimation: I have actually about 0 knowledge, maybe 5% knowledge with a lot of indulgence haha. But I am also a bit proud of what I did so far with it.

My little problem is that I don’t get exactly the part of how / where to post my writings (like how to post articles), which is a bit of a bummer, considering that that’s the main point of the entire site haha. But I hope I will figure it out soon.

I hope this will arrive in the world today, supported by your energy and love. Please support me in my dreams. Please support me in giving me strength and courage and willpower to build my dreams and build the life that I want for myself. This website is a baby step – and in the same time, a giant step: a leap of faith. It is opening the door to the future, to what I want for myself. It is the courage to dare to just open the door to the life I want for myself. So please, dad, be by my side and support me on every step of this upcoming journey which is called life. Be by my side, give me courage and support me on every step on my way.

I love you – I love you with all my heart, and I am still learning how to.. access that, how to say that, how to feel comfortable with all of this. I am still learning how I can relate to you otherwise than through your death and my pain about it. I still try to find a proper way to have you in my heart, through something more beneficial and supportive and light. I am discovering and creating the way that I would like to keep you in my life. During all this time, my love for you is unquestionable. The only thing is still uncertain is how I will carry this love, in which form.

Until then, I would like this website to appear in the world today. Not as gift to you – because it is a gift for myself. And not as commemoration or homage to you – because again, this is all about me, and the new person I am becoming. But out of gratitude and complete trust that your energy, your presence in my life will always support me, no matter if you are near me anymore or not.