San Juan, Ghosting, Wine & World Cup
San Juan, Ghosting, Wine & World Cup
You can’t be ready for someone if you aren’t still ready for yourself.
We made it. Despite everything that happened to you, you are here. You managed. You survived. And you also thrived. Give yourself some credit right now, while reading this; your past year was full of challenges and trespassers trying to get in the way of your peace, and you survived them all with a stable head on your shoulders.
That’s major.
They did not damage you.
They just taught you.
Sit in this realization for a few minutes. Let that marinate.
I launched this platform last year with the plan and a promise to myself to write stories that are more personal. Shorter than my usual articles (here’s hoping), and deeper from the heart. I didn’t do the greatest job with my resolution, as there was always some event that occurred in culture, a moment in society, a phenomenon in relationships, or a series/movie that touched me, that was more urgent to write about.
Is it urgent? Or do I always just run towards writing an op-ed on something that’s not me?
Going deep is hard, people.
Unpacking things you experienced, writing about it - means you have to relive them again. A method writing as I popularly call it. Some stories are beautiful to relive, but let’s face it, all the stories that make a difference are the ones that nearly crushed you.
Pain reaches more. And teaches more. Also, heals.
I’m pretty proud of my 2022. Hard year, but maybe my best yet.
This year, finally I felt I truly arrived to myself. I was patient, steady, and weathered the storms with a stable mind. I analyzed all the hardships and laid out a plan for overcoming them.
I’ve never felt more focused. Aware. Most of my previous years were spent in a sort of daze, not understanding where I’m headed, not realistic about many relationships I had; romantic or friendly, and failing to see my part in many of its demises.
You can’t be ready for someone if you aren’t still ready for yourself.
But in 2022, I fully got it. Other people’s shortcomings, my own; how I got in all these situations that don’t benefit me.
I, like you, dealt with many dubious people in the past year. Some were so terrible I thought, how are these people allowed out in the wilderness, among humans? Yet, surviving those with a clear head on my shoulders made me - this, now. Focused.
Unreachable.
I might have taken some time to get here, but I’m here, at this platform, where I feel warm and fuzzy like someone is handing me a cup of hot cocoa through the screen, vying to do what I have envisioned here on Antagolist.
Going deeper. Diving in.
My 2022 was filled with so much. Lessons. Travels. Great trips. Food. Wine. Meeting great people that pick you up when in shambles. There was some unexplainable magic, as the stars really saw me and awarded me for the struggles I faced and handled on my own in the past decade.
2022 might be the year I made the least money, but I did the best work and, somehow, got to travel the most. It was made possible due to laser-focused planning and making damn good decisions. I’ve seen cities and countries I’ve never been to; it changed my perspective of what’s important in life, and how much I appreciate the solitude, good food, sea, sun, and simplicity of life.
I visited Puerto Rico. It shocked me, in the best ways possible. I got to swim in the sea that’s not mine, yet I felt the same rebirth and healing that I only feel when I jump in the Adriatic. That never happened before.
The best way to find yourself is away from familiarity.
I enjoyed the simplicity of the people I met, the art on the streets, the history of every building, and the helpful, kind strangers on every corner. I traveled with a friend but decided to stay and enjoy the place on my own.
I had the best time.
Talking to strangers.
I wrote so much in the evening breeze; I could do this life, do my work, eat some great food, enjoy the sea, a glass of something after a job well done.
I went back to Los Angeles on a business trip, a city where I lived for 9 years and hated vigorously. I got reminded of people constantly trying to convince me one simply cannot hate the palms and the ocean. I also remembered how I always stood my ground, removed all the noise coming from people who simply don’t know what’s best for you, and finally moved to a city that fit me best.
We make the mistake of listening to the outside chatter often; friends who see your life through their lens and impose their takes on you, as well as American TV shows telling you palm trees must mean happiness, instead of trusting our intuition.
Los Angeles almost destroyed my mental health. The city is not about the palms, the city, at least for me, is about the people.
My coming back to LA after two years on a work trip was a victory lap and a confirmation of a good decision made.
I saw my former friends, shells of the people I left, with dubious lives I no longer understood or even wanted to witness for a few days I was there.
In 2022, I also shared my living space with a friend who was intent on obstructing my life, it wasn’t personal, as much as she was miserable and wanted a partner in misery I wasn’t about to give her; I simply have no time for empty socializing at this stage of my life. Every minute of my day is accounted for, and pointless conversations or TV watching where I learn nothing - no longer interest me.
It was the hardest living situation I have ever experienced, but I was the most productive in it. During those few months living there, I wrote more articles and chapters than in the past 2 years combined. I learned that my body goes into full-on combat mode when someone tries to prevent me from producing my articles. SWAT-style mode to achieve what I didn’t manage in the most serene living environments.
I never knew I could have such mental strength, and I feel unpenetrable for it.
I visited my family over the summer, usually a very Shakespearian undertaking. But this year, somehow, the beef I usually have with them was minimal - mission impossible for the past 20 years. I laid out some boundaries as I stepped off the plane, and after months of therapy and self-therapy, I finally learned how not to get affected by people who wouldn’t be able to walk 300 meters in my shoes.
Unapologetic.
I also ruined a relationship/connection I invested in for the past 2 years, or whatever you can call a union where two people live on separate continents; one half-fight, and a few misunderstandings later; we were gone.
No communication, no explanation, just gone. I didn’t take it well at first, but then I unwrapped this conundrum of realization: I often don’t make good choices in people, and the universe is here to assist me, to take away the situations I cannot, that aren’t best for me.
I didn’t need explanations, I didn’t need closure, and you don’t need it either.
Usually, when we say we just need closure, what we actually want is a window or a door back in. We don’t need it, we just want it.
You don’t want closure. You want back.
And back is where you don’t need to go.
In the midst of me still not realizing all this, someone else busted into my life. I wasn’t particularly nice to him, he was a rebound; I was annoyed, short, and even rude at times. When I was rude or assertive, he didn’t challenge me, he would just say - “Ok, you can elaborate on that when we see each other”.
My sister was spending the summer where he was spending his summer, the place he insisted I come to so we could see each other. I came intending to hate the place and everyone in it, hate him, and stay in that wallowing space. The first night I saw him he was slightly annoying me, or was I just too tired and worn out from the previous experience, that I didn’t have enough energy for someone’s excitement over our possible union.
I asked for Red Bull and he got it for me, but then ordered a bottle of wine at the restaurant and sat too close to me on the stone steps while we were waiting for the table. The scenario of him sitting too close to me so I couldn’t look at him to have a conversation, as well as having both Red Bull and a glass of wine in both hands wasn’t a perfect layout for a neurodivergent mind. I was annoyed and he was excited. Apparently, he wanted to meet me since 2004, or something slightly similar, but definitely in the Dickens vicinity.
We did meet briefly in 2006, and he said I wasn’t receptive back then. I might have been too popular to be focused on him, he says.
I wanted to be receptive now, but the Red Bull and the wine in both hands, sitting too close on the steps, and watching over a bottle of wine not to fall from the stone steps were unsettling me.
When we finally sat at the table, he across me, not sideways anymore, Red Bull in my stomach, tiredness subdued, wine glass and the bottle sturdily on the table, and a smell of the most amazing food in the Adriatic about to hit the table (and my mouth), I felt good. Bordeline enjoying it, but I didn’t tell him that.
I was wounded when I met him. Not in 2006, but now, in 2022. In fact, the first night we met was 3 weeks before the Red Bull and the wine situation; we met when he jumped in to remove me from decking some guy who had spit his drink on my hand in the club, to get my attention.
Yes, that’s how my summer of 2022 started.
And the summer ended with him nursing me back to life. He took me to the best beaches, and restaurants; we took boat cruises and went to all local exhibitions (“because we need to support Croatian artists”), we visited local stonemasons and admired their work, and we found the best secluded wineries on Croatian Islands. I wasn’t into wine that much before I met him. I could drink white wine here or some red when the hosts insisted, but I never enjoyed it like most people do.
He had a good tactic. He loved red wine (he’s French), but kept drinking white with me and slowly introduced me to drop of red here and there. I wasn’t there yet, but I drank it to make him happy; after all - all he was doing for the whole summer was trying to make me happy. And then one night, I had some red and actually liked it, without pretending. On our way to a restaurant, he knew a great little secluded winery on the island that had the best red wines in the country, I tried one, I don’t know if it was him or the wine, but that glass hit differently.
I enjoyed it.
It was a good day.
When I go out now, I order red wine, and not to make him happy.
He restored my faith in people. In men. He’s far from perfect, and not someone I want to stay with, but for that moment in time, and for a lifelong friendship, he was what the doctor ordered.
He calls every day and somehow manages to do every single thing he says he will do.
He doesn’t like texting. He calls you.
Sometimes he’s annoyed with the busyness of his life, and when I need to hear details about something that’s not logical to me, instead of explaining it to me, he just says - I can’t now I’m tired and never gets back to it. Not sure if that’s his tactic too, but it taught me to let go. Not everything had to make sense to me.
He keeps being there, day after day.
He taught my neurodiverse brain not to need to know the process of everything, sometimes things just ARE.
And to finish 2022, I also got the World Cup on top of an already mind-blowingly emotional year.
When I first heard the ’22 World Cup is to be held in Qatar, a non-football country, in the middle of the winter, I was offended. How dare you? World Cup is an event, the occurrence you watch in your tank top and shorts, half drunk in the middle of the day, talking smack with your friends and anonymous enemies online belonging to a country of your opponent.
And yet, this particular World Cup and all its dramaturgy worth of a volume of Sartre - delivered so much, in the exact time we needed it, finishing off not just 2022, but a period of taxing two years with a bow-out worth of Broadway.
Croatia. Back-to-back medal. Two Cups in a row. One columnist once said football is about who we are, but even more so about who we are not.
It was a perfect ending to an already crazy, taxing, and emotional year; an epilogue. I’m proud of this team. I’m proud of what we represent in this world and how we came about, how mauled we had to get during history to have this; the phenomenon that we are in football, and a question many sports commentators have - how does this tiny country and this team manage to do THIS?
A team reflects a nation, they say. But also it doesn’t. As one Croatian columnist said: “Football is just a metaphor for life. In the Croatian case, the national football team is the most convincing metaphor for the nation. But the nation is also just a metaphor.”
I like the metaphor of my nation, who they are, and what they allowed me to experience at the end of the arduous two years.
Or in the words of one distinguished Twitter Commentator:
“Croatia don’t dance, don’t make noise, get on their business quietly, and are one game away from back-to-back World Cup finals. Respect man.”
I read that last “respect man” in the voice of Wayne from Wayne’s World.
“None of us is only what we are, but also what we’re not. Especially when it comes to us who were born by hardships on the borders of the worlds.”