Sven : A letter to my 30 years old self.

Paris, November 2011

Dear Sven!

Today you are torturing yourself. Your heart aches and you are not sure if it is your heart or your ego. You love Jacob, he's beautiful, intelligent, educated and so very young.  He has his future ahead of him, lined up career as an actor and he genuinely loves you. Not that you have ever told each other. But you both know it. You need to work your way through to take interest in others, you need to learn to listen to them and be more in the real than in your own imagination and judgment.

You have been dreaming about going to Italy for the past five years. But you are unable to take a step towards autonomy. That is the reason that makes you doubt the fact that you spend time on thinking about Jacob just to postpone your departure.

You don't want to read and you don't mind your own interests anymore. Your body is giving out signals that there is time for you to change your habits.  Your heart bleeds and your brain is boiling. You are looking for a way to stop the pain and the best solution would be to split with Jacob. But will we ever see each other again? Will I still love him? Will he still love me? Is it all important?

It is awful not giving people value, or at least pretending not to.

Today, you cannot imagine your life without him, without his body, without his smile, without the little fights. The other day you questioned yourself and realized you don't need to meet any other guy... But you need to discover your own self. To see who you are and understand your own worth.

I would like to know where you are now, at thirty. Still in Paris? In Paris again? Somewhere in Italy or in another country? Finally in New York? Or did you give in to Canada or return to Slovakia? And your friends? Who is next to you? What happened to Iris? Your sisters, do they have any children? Your father, is he with a woman that makes him happy?

And your childhood friends Silvia, Julia, Petra, Zuzana, do you ever get to see them?

And, what do you do for living? Always in the shoe business? How many languages do you speak? Did you forget any? Are you happy? Rich? Poor? Satisfied?

And Jacob in all that? Do you get his news? Is he next to you? Did you completely forget him? And this counts for both Jacobs in your life.

Do you remember being in the hall of Jehova's Witnesses imagining you would come out of the bathroom , suddenly being twenty four years old and on the way to be independent, it's not that way now...how about now that you're thirty?

Can you prioritize? Did you get a better understanding of what is important in life? Did you understand your little mistakes? Do you hurt less the people that love you? Did you learn to listen and to listen to yourself?

You need to know that I love you anyway and anyhow. You are very extraordinary and certainly unique, I would have missed you if I haven't met you. But you are equal to others. Everybody is equal. You aren't worth any more or any less than the others.

I hope you learned to be humble and take distance with the situations. I hope you react in a less emotive and more thoughtful manner. I hope you don't hurt people around you and that you don't bend yourself too much for the others. Also, I hope you quit that bad habit of being a victim.

And physically, we are quite the hot stuff at twenty five, but the skin is not that fresh anymore and you lack muscles. Did you work on your longevity by working out? Are you bold and chubby? You should be terribly sexy at your mature age, but are we still premature in bed? I think the fact that you can't give Jacob a long moment of pleasure bothers you.  And your mental block that makes you go weak when he offers himself to you...

Come on, be a man! Yes, I want you to be a man, the train to becoming a woman has left the station without you and it would have been a very bumpy ride. Be yourself. Be the one you were born before this World filled you with images of what you should be. Be virile and assume your life choices.

I only hope you regret the least things and choices possible.

Always remember what Eugene from Montaigne Market told you:

"You are a positive person!"