The Fire of Enthusiasm

I think time has come for new year’s resolutions, as well as for looking back at 2013 and thinking over the question if it has been a good year or not. 

2013… I can’t complain about this year. I got to know that I passed my exams in advanced English – even if it was just the result of something I did the year before (I took the exams in 2012). I had to be hospitalized for a short time in The Castle, which is negative in some way, but was an interesting experience. I don’t think I’ll ever go back to The Castle in the future; should I need a hospitalization – and I pray I won’t – I’ll go to Basel. However, in The Castle I could find myself again, I could take a break from my family and from a nasty reality made of insults and a neurotic routine. I got to know some people, like Paolo, who made me realize that at the moment there are many people around me who are far more desperate than I could ever imagine to be. I sometimes feel guilty for discontinuing the contact with that poor devil, but he was driving me nuts and was becoming a sort of stalker. I think he was falling in love with me, but sadly I did not reciprocate his feelings. 

During this year I very much focused my attention on therapy, and even if I am sometimes disheartened and think that things within my family will never change, they are changing. There is especially something very important which changed. Some time ago, I was the crazy, ill, invalid and little teenager who had to be kept a watch over 24 / 7, be helped, supported in an almost suffocating way, and who was unable to do anything. Now, things are the opposite: my father has become old all of a sudden, my mother has become fragile and somehow vulnerable, and the caregiver is me. Maybe that’s just another trick to tie me up in the dysfunctional familiar trio (mom, dad and me) and prevent me from leaving the family, because now… they need me. 

I have been thinking a lot about having a child, a husband, my own family, marrying, oh, and why not a girl?, but I’m still very confused. I have been going through a homosexual phase, in which I thought to be attracted only by women; then I thought to be bisexual, because I happened to find guys attractive… I have been looking for a sexual identity, but I think I am simply pansexual, because when I fall in love, the gender doesn’t matter. Adult consensual sexual behavior is accepted and welcome, and I hope one day I will find my partner, may this be a he, a she, a trans; someone who speaks to my heart, whose mind appeals to me and whose appearance takes my breath away. During 2013 I have been feeling the biological clock ticking sometimes, that means, a voice saying "You’re getting older, and still no babies in sight". Well, I would make a terrible mother, honestly. I cannot afford having a poor creature to take care of, if I can barely take care of myself. An ex friend of mine once said to me she was going to get a dog, and if after a couple of months she was still able to take care of the dog, she was going to have a baby; as if the dog were a "first step" towards a more demanding task. I asked her what she was going to do in case she was not able to keep the dog. She simply replied she would take it to a kennel. And the baby? Free for adoption. Well, that’s not my attitude. The day I will decide to get pregnant I will be sure to be willingly pregnant and be sure that I want to keep the baby and that I am able to do so. 

What do I look for in 2014? Good question. I have some projects, materially. I would like to take and pass my exams in proficiency English. I would like to go back to University in Autumn, and study what I have always wanted to study: philosophy. What do I look for in philosophy? Answers. Comfort. A shelter. I don’t study philosophy with the aim of becoming a professional who earns a lot of money, I should rather reckon with the fact that I might become a jobless teacher. But I don’t care. I have enough to live, thank God. 

On an emotional level, I hope to become an adult in 2014. No joke. I am a 33-year-old teenager. My way to interact with others is exactly the one of a 13-year-old, and I urgently need to fix this. I will never have friends, acquaintances, a serious relationship with a partner, as long as I think as a child instead of taking responsibilities as an adult should do. I have a few friends, Marvin in the first place, but I am aware of the fact that things go so well with Marvin because he is a teenager like me. We are made the one for the other, but we don’t even manage to be in a relationship because none of us knows how  to build a relationship. I would like to become independent in my heart and soul; at the present time I am still far too attached to my mother. I don’t bear to be a couple of days without her. 

Last but not least, what I want to follow in 2014 is the fire of enthusiasm. Whatever I do, I want to do it with that spark within my heart, with that energy which can make us feel one and the same with the whole world. This does not mean that I will do only things that I like to do; sadly, there are also chores in life, and things we have to do and we dislike. This does not mean, however, that we cannot do them with enthusiasm. I would like to live the life of someone who doesn’t have time to waste in trifles. Life is too short for that. Too precious. Even if I just make one small little insignificant thing, I want to know I’m doing something useful, may I like it or not, and be sure I’m not wasting my time with something superfluous. I will not waste my time with people who don’t deserve my attention, I will devote my time to my real friends instead; I will try not to dwell in painful memories but devote my time to building a future instead; I will try to become alive, even if I feel partially dead inside since I "died" in 2005. Sometimes we have to kiss our past goodbye and start fresh. 

I wish you all a Happy New Year, and may the Fire of Enthusiasm be with you all! Take gentle

care!