Part fact part fiction is what life is.
In a subterranean space hidden from the eyes of the usual, unimpressed expats,
another Brussels is expanding, laying out its pieces before me, drawing me in.
Nobody starts their conversations with "what do you do?",
there are no businesscards, no jaded sense of self-importance.
"What do you write?" they ask,
curiously eyeing each other, trying to see past the exterior.
Erotic science fiction, bruised poems, criminal novels, the occasional surreal short story.
And short sentences.
Like this.
We share tales of fleeting inspiration, scattered notebooks, elusive recognition
and embarrassing drafts imprudently left by the copy machine.
We part without exchanging phone numbers and nobody will look me up on Linkedin.com
Maybe it is all the same in the end, but it is different then and there.
- What do you write?
The question allowing for the disclosure of your entire life, or for making it all up.
To leave out nothing or to selectively open up doors, while closing the windows.
After all, nothing is as true as story.
Trust storytellers to tell you that.
Tu choisis quoi; Un lovestory de 1ère ou 2e classe?
Perhaps it wasn't so much my reluctance to ask what you wanted
As your refusal to acknowledge my questions
As if it was somehow my own fault
that I did not know, did not understand
How you were waking up and falling asleep with someone else
Yet you still wanted more, you still needed me.
Perhaps I was always better off not knowing.
Perhaps you really did not know, either.
You would shamelessly demand
and I would shamefully empty my centre to give you more.
We are each other's worst version
Holding on to one another even though we were both weighed down
We think it's gravity, but it was the anchor of us
We were- we are- sinking.
You asked me once, do you remember?
- Why do we keep doing this?
I sighed, sensed you did not want an honest answer.
- Animal instincts, I replied wearily.
You seemed pleased at the thought.
As if all that guilt you were feeling had been taken away.
I had absolved you, but what I hoped for was my own absolution.
We are children running to the playground,
Trying to navigate, crossing a minefield
we've banned most of what we have in common to numb our bad conscience
The memories, the guilt, the happiness, the hurt
Even fantasies.
This perfectly designed self-deceptive reality would crack, of course.
And how many times can we really break til we're shattered?
Lost and found
Underneath the surface, the bubbles are rising.
It's been a long time coming, like an abstract premonition breathing me in the neck.
This presentiment of me becoming myself.
No, that's not it.
Of the world becoming more accustomed to me, perhaps?
Anaïs Nin wrote "I will not adjust myself to the world. I am adjusted to myself".
And Jeanette Winterson wisely added that "to be ill adjusted to a deranged world is not a break-down".
And I do have this sense of things around me finally getting used to the shape of me.
As though the world got tired of trying to change me and decided to let me be.
And to start giving me compliments just for being who I am.
Or, perhaps it was always just me getting in my own way.
So busy trying to be myself that I did not realize I was just playing the part of me.
I cultivated my quirks, but it was always more an act of defiance than the ease of being.
Always cherishing solitude, but I treated even that with defensiveness,
shutting others out so that I could reconciliate with what I thought I had been confined to.
I repeated to myself it's FINE, capital letters, and of course it is. I know that now.
Maybe it's age, maybe it simply takes longer for some people to catch up with themselves.
And as I become accustomed to the real me, others are finding me too.
So, it is like Tolkien wrote:
Not all those who wander are lost.
But then again, some of us don't know we are lost until we are found.
