Dear beloved readers,

After a long sabbatical week that I gave myself for working my butt off on the thesis, I am back – a little later than I planned on but back none the less. It’s been hard coming here, every week trying to find in me the right thing to say, even when there’s nothing really right at all. I was never good at that, and you guys are more than aware about it, but lately, even my nails are a mess, and that was something that we never used to have.

I gathered my thoughts enough times since the last time I wrote for you guys to know that there’s no mental organization that I could possibly do that would make this mess a little prettier. Life was never perfect but I don’t remember the bad being so ugly. I remember when it bruised and when it ached but I don’t recall it feeling this way, this cloud of feelings and thoughts that are heavy and foggy but never really get to anywhere. And I am lucky, I am lucky I didn’t lose anyone, lucky I have amazing people by my side, lucky to even be healthy right now, but goddamn it, I cannot stand this bloody pandemic anymore.

I know, there’s no bratty tantrum I can throw here that will make it go away. But one thing I learned about me this year is that as much as I don’t dwell very good with change, I am not great at not progressing either. I’ve been a competitive being since I came out of the womb, already deciding I wanted to be the loudest baby in that nursery, no one would cry as loud as I would. Yesterday, while watching nothing but Football – the American kind – I found myself buzzing and getting goosebumps and cursing and it got to the point that I even cried, not because I was super involved or dying to see my team winning, but because I finally got to have any sort of competition again. Wait, no, hear me out. This year, kinda stagnated, well at least my life, everything that was part of my routine became a blur and then seized to exist, even my apartment has been getting emptier and emptier and I don’t even have it in me to understand how drastically things can change in a second. But my point is, this year stagnated my life in a point that, although there was a lot of change, there wasn’t a lot of progress, and try to explain to my OCD self that we are not the best version we could be right now….ooof.

But last week, as I told you guys Tony and I finally got to see each other, and even if it felt like the fastest three hours of my life, which also made me realize that no amount of time with her will ever be enough, I realized that there was progress, but it just wasn’t what I expected it would be.

Think about the goals you had this year, for me it was to literally be more “I don’t give a fuck” energy, if you read my 2020 goals post, that is what it was about. But of course, aside being a badass, I wanted to achieve things such as to write my book and to be more healthy, travel, have fun, care less….well. I am not going to get into what I didn’t accomplish, but between brownies and talks about the greatness of the vagina, and again, everyone needs a Tony as their best friend, we came to a very serious conclusion about the year of 2020, the COVID-19 and the progress we made this year and how it did actually change us as people, not just the logistics of our lives.

The pandemic did this thing in which, like I said, a tantrum wasn’t enough, so it required quick understanding and a sense of maturity that, I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t always have in stock. It needed patience, and understanding that theres no poking that will fix this, kinda like that pimple that shows up three days before your birthday. We all needed to be quick to get to the moment in which we sat down, took a deep breath, maybe cried a little bit, but said to ourselves “You know what, this is fine. I may be dealing with a Vitamin D deficit and I may be about to lose my mind inside this apartment but it is fine”, and repeat that however many times it was required. We were suddenly forced to grow up and understand that life works in a way that it didn’t a minute ago, that life is not what we think and made of it, it is something completely unreachable, untamed, out of control, something that like slob, nameless cats, don’t belong to no one. And understand that this is okay.

And after this talk and epiphany, I understood a little bit better this whole grown up thing. It’s funny because sometimes I will be talking to my mom or my boyfriend and it will hit me that I may be 21 but I am still have a long path until I am the mature woman I know I someday will be. But while I did have rush to get there a few years ago, right now I understand the need to appreciate the teenager drama queen that still lives in me, I still acknowledge her and give her the attention she needs but I also don’t take her too serious. Whenever I am like that, my boyfriend does the classic “Baby…come on….” and I get it. I totally get it and this is the energy I use to deal with myself when this maturity is lacking, to say hey snap the hell out of it and see things as they are rather than how you wish they were, it’s not that hard. So this is, somehow progress, maturity and a lot of evolution too.

But it comes with awful things too beloved readers. I don’t know how old you are right now, or what phase of your life you are, but I find myself in a scary moment in which it’s the end of my academic life, or at least the end of it right here. And the friends from school and college, they are becoming my adult friends. This is going to sound complicated because obviously at one point they would become adults, but I mean that we are all growing up, and what happens when people grow up? They grow apart. But not in the way you are thinking, we don’t stop liking each other or becoming new people. Well, maybe we do become new people, it’s also part of the package. What I mean is, we become our own. We stop seeing each other everyday and being attached to them in the sense that you don’t even go to college when they are not gonna be there. The plans for the weekend are thought around yourself and not them and it’s weird. It’s weird because while in college, or whatever other place you find your friends, it feels for a second that its going to last forever, this whole “we” thing. It’s our gossips, our moments, our classes. And then we start to get singular lives, and we are making plans alone or with a significant other, but not with those people anymore, they still exist in your life but they are not very much of a part of it anymore. Do you understand? Is this confusing?

Basically, we grow up, and all these friendships we saw everyday and swore by, they kinda change. The love remains but you get too caught up on your own life and that it, you stay in each other’s lives but far away. We care about each other but we don’t see or talk to each other everyday. It’s weird, very weird, but it’s part of it. And while Clair told us about her plans, Tony said she was packing and I could only whisper what the future held for me, I realized it was the end of an era. Long gone were the daily lunch dates, the ditching classes and the exchange of obvious looks, now what was left was this aching, stingy feeling of how much I will forever miss them, but how it’s time for us to part our own ways. I felt it, Tony did too, we sat in silence for a second, remembering the fights and the bickering, the moments in which it felt like forever and we took pieces of it for granted, there was regret and sorrow, but also contemplation, a glimpse of the full picture, and yet another realization: It’s going to be so much different now, but forever ago we decided we were soulmates, so wherever life takes us, to the end of the world or another pandemic, how lucky are we to always get to have each other, no matter how far or how close?

Until next week beloved readers, I hope you know that even if it doesn’t seem, the world is still moving, and we are still always going forward, and that even with late updates, you will always have a friend in me. Stay inside and out of trouble, but if you don’t – oh my god, tell me all about it.

– Your Girl on the Go