Linnea

Haven’t written here in a while and will take my entries someplace else in the new year. 12/28/2011 – I’m grateful, at the end of this year, for love. My boyfriend’s love, my closest friend’s, my mother’s, and if this were a list I’d care to write, it surely wouldn’t end here. I’m equally thankful to be provided the opportunity to love – especially those mentioned beforehand, but also many others, people, things, that bring joy to my life and help to armour me against depression. Grateful, more than anything, for having desires, for allowing myself to have hope. Desire, perhaps the opposite of depression, and the prerequisite for bringing to life the Serenity Prayer which I used to have on my list of 43 things as a reminder of what’s possible and what isn’t. I don’t pray, ever, and I finally decided to remove this “goal” today, but I continue to be thankful for every instance in the past year which honored this wish, or, more adequately, this hope: the hope “to be granted the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and to have the wisdom to know the difference”. And last but not least, I am thankful for the external factors that allow me the freedom to pursue the things I wish to pursue. The lucky circumstances of my life, including my own health and the health of others.

What I remember from 2011. That we didn’t talk for long stretches. That I decided to invite him to come to Berlin for his birthday weekend and that we successfully hunted for jeans, had dinner at the Thai (?) place around the block, and an earnest conversation on Sunday morning. All in all, a good weekend. In September, from the best of intentions to high drama on the actual day, my mother’s big day, and the conclusion: we just can’t, and (my conclusion) I’m sick of it. And he echoed that sentiment on the second day of Christmas, which led me to wonder, once again: why do I risk this again and again, and should I? or should I let the days beforehand – breakfast and shopping in Hamburg, a harmonious Christmas eve – count more?

I am still honoring the goal. It’s really just this question. And that I wish to be able to relax for real, for once? forever? but never can’t, being the older sister.

Last entry: 14 months ago. I still definitely want to go to New York, we both do, but lately, a recurring question has been: how can we go back to normal?
And I wonder, is it time for a big leap, perhaps at the end of the year, or are we going to find ourselves somewhere in the middle… “Southern Germany” is the key word, which is something that elicits different responses from me, both positive and negative, but none as positive as the words “abroad” or “U.S.” do.

If I want us to take a big leap together, then. I know.