2002 review

Dec 24, 2002 by Lyanna

The end of the year is approaching fast. This was a strange year for me. The year of the big change. The year of me finally choosing for me. The year of hurt, tears, anxiety. The year of new things, great changes, and lots of love.

When I look back at the beginning of the year, and compare it to my life now, nothing is the same. I remain the only constant in it. When Januari comes, the change will be complete. I have a new house, a new car, a new job and a new boyfriend. A lot can happen in a year.

Januari

The year didn’t really start of well. Gino was confined to home on account of the accident with his eye and I started to feel more and more cooped up. We thought that we had put our differences aside now that he had had such bad luck. I thought that love would prevail and that it would solve whatever problems we had. Boy was I wrong.

Februari

The fights are starting again. It doesn’t matter that Gino’s eye is still horribly impaired. It doesn’t matter that I hurt for him terribly or that it is so unfair. While Gino retreats back into himself, I come to realize that I have a life of my own too. I go climbing with L. more and more and make friends of my own. I go out, and Gino starts to notice the difference. He feels I am running away from him and thinks it is because of the eye. We have a big fight in the beginning of the month, and for two weeks we really try again..but fall back into the same pattern. I resove: no more. And end it at the end of the month. The hardest thing I have ever done. I walk around in a daze for days. Our mutual friends either react surprised and hurt, or understanding.

I don’t realize that the evening I end it will be my last evening in the house I have come to call my own. Because the tension between us is so great, I pack up a small bag and leave for my parents the next. I never come back except for packing. The break is so radical that it takes a while to sink in.

March

I am looking for houses. And I feel lost, and hurt, and empty. I work my head off, and loose 12 pounds in one month. People are starting to get worried about me. I find a house I like on the 20th of March. It turns out to be the one I like the most so I proceed in the first steps of buying it.
I go out with L. some more, and somehow end up in bed with Joost. Didn’t mean for that to happen, I guess it was just the situation.

April

I am very confused about the situation with Joost and in the end resolve I am just a traditional girl with no taste for “sex for just sex”. Ah well. I guess I just felt guilty for jumping in the sack with someone so soon after Gino. It was just a reaction, I can see that now…*shrugs*
I resolve to go to Boston in July to meet up with Denis and Nat, and set the plans in motion. After a lot of negotiating on the house, I finally agree with the bid on the 10th of april. I feel my energy returning, or at least I think so, and start leading a very active life of constant partying, lots of sporting and going outside – the weather is great – I think I am doing the right thing in picking up my life with such speed again.

May

Probably the most unbalanced month of the whole year. I go out on Queensday, just at the end of April, and from there on in, everything goes downhill. I feel awful. Now that everything is settled, the house has been bought and I can do nothing but wait until August – when I get the key – my life comes down in shambles. All this time I have been running from one party to another, and apparently my body and mind can’t keep up anymore. On the second of may I collapse, and realize that I am trodding on a destructive path with the constant partying and self-exhaustion. I take a week off and do nothing but cry and sleep. I call off the Boston trip because I don’t have enough vacation hours to go to America AND redecorate the house in July. Everything comes back to haunt me: have I made the right decision, what the hell am I doing here…I start questioning everything.
Meanwhile, I start a very lively email conversation with a collegue at PinkRoccade whom I know from the headoffice. At first it is just a friendly contact and it helps me to smile again. Pim Fortuyn gets shot and the country is in turmoil…I remember driving to L. from my parents…and driving over the withered flowers of his funeral wreaths…the car with the casket was preceding me on the road. Ugh.
The collegue at PinkRoccade, The Man, asks me out on a motor tour. I accept…and that is the beginning of the upturn in my life. We mail eachother every day and the contact becomes more romantic by the day. I go to work with a smile on my face and my feet ten feet in the air…and I count the days until the motor tour.

June

We really hit it off…here’s a passage from my diary back then, written on the third of june: “Oh lord, where shall I begin? With the way he kissed me while we sat on the stairs of the AC Restaurant waiting for the rest of the party to show up? With the freedom I felt while behind him on the motorcycle, the sun on my face and the smell of the landscape passing me by in pockets of air? With how we lay in the grass with the sun going down over our backs…talking, making out…the damaged motorcycle behind us and German cars passing us by, honking? With how I drove him home and he made some croissants for me while I was taking a shower?”

It seemed happiness had returned to my life again. I’d never been this completely, head over heels in love before. But it was confusing as well. I suddenly found myself with another boyfriend. Which was very strange after 7 years. And for him, it was a little bit too early too. We told eachother that very honestly. But resolved to keep going anyway. Why waste something that precious? We were willing to take a chance, and boy, am I glad we did!

July-now
Of course I could go on blabbering per month about how wonderful things are..and they are. I mean, I really am glad that I walked through all that shit in the beginning of the year. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have met The Man, and I wouldn’t be where I am now. But lets say that the months between July and now have basically been very happy with little out of the ordinary happening. Oh, sure, I left PinkRoccade and will start out with a new job in januari….I moved into the house on August 1st and things are great…we went on vacation to the Dolomites, Italy in July, which was awsome…we will be leaving for London in two days…etc etc etc. But these are happy times. Basically, this year I learned to value life as it comes. I learned to take life as it comes. I learned that you’d better enjoy all the good times you have thouroughly. I guess this year made me a more positive person than I was, which is strange, because it wasn’t all that positive in itself. All in all, it’s been a rough year. But a worthwhile one as well.