Life Lately – 10 Happy Things That Happened This Fall

Second Blog-anniversary

On the 14th of September, the blog turned two. Ironically, I never thought of myself as “likeable”. I never thought I was the type of person people would ever look up to. I still don’t think I do. No amount of likes or follows will ever change that, I will always perceive myself to be too ridiculous to handle. So you can imagine my surprise when I see that three years after, I am still here. It got me thinking that no matter how many times I consider stopping everything, I will always keep going because writing stories is what makes me feel strong. The good thing is that the more of them I write, the less fuck I give about being charming. I used to write posts like pop stars write love songs, cliché enough to be likeable. Three years of PB have taught me that the real blogging is about finding your own expression of likeable and that mine might definitely be on the grounds of unlikeable. And that if that ever happened to be a niche, then I would proudly claim it home.

Turning 25

There were happy emoji balloons floating in the apartment, carrot cake on the counter, friends that couldn’t be more different from each other and nothing left from the first half of my twenties. Dessi showered me with McDonald’s french fries when the clock stroke midnight, Zarin waited in front of my door with her hands full with delicacies, Mikayla Pink wrote the words I needed to hear, Mikhaela H. brought a bottle of Martini that she made me finish to the end and YJ ended up at my apartment with her uniform still on to eat my brother’s ramen. Darius brought all them together for what happened to be our first social gathering at the Boustantchi house. The voice I wanted to hear was missing, but that was perhaps the only thing I wasn’t surprised by, because well, he never called anyway. However, for the first time, it really didn’t matter. It was midnight, and I was crying. Not of sadness, not of fear. I was crying because my life had arrived to a point where it was so flawed, it simply became flawless. It was far from being what I envisioned for myself at 25 and that was the whole magic of it.

Reconnecting with Darius

On paper, Darius and I are what people call goals siblings. So close you could think we are together H24, so similar you could think we are twins. But in real life we are so different, it took us years to find a balance to finally understand each other. Earlier this year, everything went completely out of balance. We went through months of not being there for one and another, of giving up on trying to make things right, of saying “that’s it I can’t deal with this anymore”. We are both still growing up, sometimes in what feels to be enemy territory. It was toxic, it was painful and it honestly scared the shit out of me. I don’t think there is anything more terrifying than feeling that you don’t even recognize the person you are supposed to know better than anyone else. But that feeling is also the tangent where you say “we need to be better otherwise this might end in the wrong direction”. So everyday, we try to put the focus on communicating better and understanding each other again. Poco a poco, pasito a pasito, or Despacito if you will.

Going home

My Visa was up, I had to go out of Canada to validate my new work Visa. So I went home. The last two years felt like drowning in a sea of in-betweens: in between love, in between work, in between countries, in between relationships. As ironic as it gets, the city I have flown away from is now my safe heaven when I stop feeling like myself. It’s like Barcelona regenerates me completely every time. It certainly triggered my definition “home”. As you all know I am pretty much in a committed relationship with Toronto, but if home is like love, then I must be polyamorous.

Social Media Detox

My phone was buried somewhere in between the covers, without any recharge needed for a few days. And fuck, it felt good. Everything was quiet. The notifications went away for a few weeks and my life was just as it had ever been behind the scenes, and that became enough. I hadn’t completely gone off social media for a solid couple of years, I didn’t remember what life felt like when you are not constantly connected to your socials. Ironically, you start caring more about making you REAL life more interesting than your online life. And you remember that well, you gotta live your life instead of pretending to live it.

This post

I knew that if I came back to blogging, I had to start blogging in a different way. The whole thing had become so edited that I didn’t feel like my true self was reflected anymore. So I wrote the post that inspired many many others but that I was always too terrified to write. It liberated me from many things I was holding back, it finally returned the voice I felt I had lost during the last years. It is undoubtedly the most important post that I have ever posted because I genuinely felt every single word written. It made me understand that real art has to make you feel vulnerable, it has to make you feel naked and that it only takes value once you overcome the fear of exposing it.

“Dark Neguine”

I guess the aftermath of all the things listed above is what I like to call “Dark Neguine”. The most interesting thing about blogging is the infinite waves of reinvention it has taken me through. What I was, thought and wanted a few months ago is completely irrelevant today. I learn what it really feels like to be me while surfing through a thousand versions of myself. That’s what makes blogging so fascinating, I think it is one of the professional avenues that constantly pushes you out of your limits, to be someone different now and then. It allows you to have as many layers as Madonna, ones that will make you cringe shamefully and others that will make you fall in love with the endless contrasts of your life.

Reputation

Did you really think I would talk about happy things without mentioning TS’ new album? Obsessed is a cute word for my current state of mind. Don’t worry, I am not gonna say more about it, except than GO. LISTEN. TO. IT. (I promise it’s worth it).

Moments of gratitude

I don’t think I truly felt the meaning of gratitude before this year. I go through shit, get over it, write about it and say “okay, I guess there was something good about it” but I never truly feel grateful about it. To me gratitude means feeling peaceful no matter what life takes you through. Sometimes we are so caught up in thinking “more shit happening, this never ends” that we simply don’t appreciate all the great things happening to us. This year, time stopped and it hit me. I was working out and Claire, my amazing Body Combat instructor, was kicking my ass to run faster and faster. I smiled as I ran, I felt breathless but full. I felt grateful. The moment only lasted a few seconds as Claire was still yelling at me, but it was there. No matter how much full of shit this year was, it was fucking magical at the same time. It was full of little moments that got me thinking ” Damn, I’m glad to be here, I’m glad to live moments like this”.

Feeling excited again.

That leads me to genuinely feeling excited again which is something I haven’t felt in probably four years. Sometimes you just work to work, you just love to love, you just live to live. There are moments like this in which you just don’t feel as excited you should feel about the life you are living. Somehow you settle into thinking that excitement is not necessary but it is. Terribly. How the hell are you supposed to feel motivated to create true value for others? How else are you going to be able to reinvent yourself both by doing mistakes and making it right? You need excitement. You need sparks. Otherwise you stay still, you stagnate and don’t grow. You have to know there is more. You have to want it. You have to feel excited for it. You have to be scared about it. Then fear in one hand, excitement in the other, go for it.

 

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WHAT I’M WEARING TODAY:  ZARA jacket, jeans and boots // BRANDY MELVILLE shirt // GUCCI bag

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