Dear last two years,
I can’t say you were wonderful. 2015 especially. Yes, especially you.
2014 sent me to a “new life” but its expectations were too great. Did I disappoint you, 2014, when I failed to open my arms to all those new people, a bit fairer, a bit… other; when I began a long photography project and at some point just crossed it out; when I sat and waited for someone to just drop from the sky and become my friend (which actually happened)?
I guess I did and because there’s no loss of energy in nature 2015 decided to disappoint me in its turn. It made me spend almost every evening at home; to put my energy, dilligence and knowledge in working for someone who eventually took me for a ride; it broke my computer and my camera (while traveling; when years decide to disappoint, they really do a good job); it allowed me to make a spontaneous decision in a dentist’s office because of which I spent the next two weeks with one and a half front teeth; it tossed and turned me like a rag doll in numerous moments of indecisiveness; it turned my fingers into butter at one of my best friend’s wedding and so I couldn’t load my film properly (yes, I am a Master in Photography, pleased to meet you); it didn’t allow me to travel all summer and the only weekend spent by a nice piece of sea was gloomy and cool.
It took away my father…
(So it goes.)
However, as I said, energy doesn’t get lost. Each minus floats in the space with a plus attached to it and, please, trust a girl who quite recently lost her father on this. It’s really easy for me to open the last two pages of my life (if we take life as a book with as many pages written as years passed) and to vigorously add a huge red minus in the bottom fields. But that would be an underestimation to say the least.
In the eve of 2016 I climbed a mountain and promised to myself that I would take the following months as a challenge not just with a worthy destination but also with a worthy journey towards it. It’s too early to say whether 2016 intends to please or disappoint me. But I think I’m beginning to understand how years “work”. Aren’t they just a mirror image of what we do to ourselves? If I please myself, won’t the year be happy, too? If I disappoint myself, won’t it frown in the end? I’m not sure. But, in any case, I know that the same way the year has a plan for me (and what a plan is it!) I have a plan for it, too. I hope neither side gets disappointed.
And meanwhile, I turn to you, my last years, I am here today to thank you. Thank you most for the minuses and do you know why? Because a minus is quite often the basis for a plus. The horizontal line which we cross with a vertical one.
In these weeks of farewell bidding, I would like to come to terms with all the bad things that happened and move on, only going back to the good memories. Here is a part of them:
2014
Thank you for the new home. It wasn’t much and then, the landlady was even blacker than her surname, but the window view to the backyard was worth it.
Besides, a home isn’t walls, ceiling and floor. Home is what you fill the space with and my man and I filled it with love. It was here where we practiced family life and became good at it.
We proved to ourselves that we could create cosiness and warmth even without perfect conditions.
I got used to the idea of cooking (almost) every day. Thanks – it everything’s OK, I’ll be exercising this habit until the rest of my life.
My man and I learned how to trust each other.
The bathtub in the kitchen wasn’t too bad, either.
Thank you a lot for the impossibly warm March weather which allowed us to have this trip.
A trip that eventually turned out to be quite interesting. (Thanks a lot for the mystical weather conditions – you can bet I will keep this moment in my memory forever!)
Thank you for the friends who just dropped from the sky.
Thanks for taking care of us during our hitch-hiking adventures and especially for that Bulgaria-bound car which you sent to us in Hungary.
Thank you for giving us those precious moments of nomadic existence.
Thanks for letting me be part of this silly idea of Dad’s and to prove him that a family is a family and that even the silly ideas born in it need to be supported. (You can bet every hour spent in the potato farm is precious to me now.)
2015
Thank you for the new home (again), for the cool landlord and for the even nicer view from the window. Thanks for miraculously finding us all the furniture we needed and for allowing us to feel like a family even more strongly.
Thank you for becoming the second year since the beginning of our existence as one whole.
Thanks for damaging our motor bike next to a cherry tree.
I even thank you for the badly chosen places. Actually, how badly chosen can a place be if it’s by the sea?
Thank you for letting us buy a scooter and actually spend some time near the beach.
Thanks for watching over Lukaš during his first driving attempts and for making him a trustworthy driver.
You know, even the gloomy weekend by the nice piece of sea wasn’t that gloomy after all…
Thanks for winning me a festival ticket and letting me share a piece of my past with my man.
Thank you for allowing me to spend some private time with my sister. I also thank you for suddenly making the weather bad and letting us have the highest (but also most crowded) peak in the Balkan peninsula all to ourselves.
And finally, thanks for eventually coming to an end.
Your page in my book of life will be bookmarked just like a few others. I will always go back to you. But, I promise you, sometimes I’ll go back smiling.
a blog about (making sense of) life 