The boy with the bread

'The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread'  
Mother Teresa. 

I know I've been going on and on about the Hunger Games the last few days and I risk sounding like a broken record by now but there are not many  stories that moved me so deeply and shook me to the core as much as the Hunger Games did. To the point that I am almost upset this is only the product of a very talented someone's imagination and not a real story (minus the violence and the destruction, of course, but there's already plenty of that going on in the world as it is).  To the point that I am amazed how Suzanne Collins did such an incredible job with the characters, how she made them almost legendary, how she gave the world not only a page turner but also a deeply moving story with an ultimately very strong social message.

I can count on my fingers the books that have poisoned me with such an intense emotion, consumed me and burnt me to the point that I almost wanted to disintegrate from my present and live forever between their pages.  I think I can name just a few: Pride and Prejudice, A Thousand Splendid Suns, Shadow of the Wind, One Day... There are probably hundreds of other books I truly enjoyed and appreciated, but which didn't leave me empty and still shaken the moment that last page turned. Hunger Games did...

It's because of the boy with the bread. I mentioned already a few days ago that I fell in love with a 17-year old fictional character: Peeta Mellark, the boy with the bread.  I've been thinking about it since: what is the one thing I can say about this character, the one word that says it all and it's the one truly necessary quality for me to fall hopelessly in love with someone. It's because he's noble. Yes, noble is the word, because it means so many things: distinguished, moral, honest, of excellent character, principled, worthy, dignified, admirable, courageous, high-minded. All these in the same person,  a normal, gentle, strong, friendly and approachable person. That's the most attractive thing in the world to me. And I am glad I finally figured it out.

I feel so inspired by his character (and many others from the book) that I am almost afraid to take a look at my life and realise I am not noble. At least not at the moment... Don't suppose you can call yourself noble just by living your normal life, not hurting anyone, but neither doing anything amazing for someone else either, just following your everyday routine, not really being fully aware of the things and people around, engulfed in your own thoughts about your own self. I don't think I can call myself noble and that's a truth I have to face...


I've been looking at my life for a long time now. Turning it and tossing it around without figuring it out what I am looking for. But I think I found the answer. I need to step out of my comfort zone and become a noble person, someone who cares, someone who inspires, someone who gets closer to the truth. I am yet to find the expression of that, but having mentioned to one of my good friends the other day how engulfed I was in the Hunger Games and how I wished so hard for me to be capable of inspiring such feelings in people she said I was already doing that... That surprised me because I never thought much about my blog posts. I always thought they were some kind of therapeutic expression of my feelings and emotions. But she said: 'We all feel this kind of things, but we can't all write about them the way you do...' I thank her for that. She may have awaken something in me..Some sort of hunger... 


'So before he can talk, I stop his lips with a kiss. 


I feel that thing again. The thing I only felt once before. In the cave, last year, when I was trying to get Haymitch to send us food. I kissed Peeta about a thousand times during those Games and after. But there was only one kiss that made me feel something stir inside. Only one that made me want more (...)


And after a few attempts, Peeta gives up talking. The sensation inside me grows warmer and spreads out from my chest, down through my body, out along my arms and legs, to the tips of my being. Instead of satisfying me, the kisses have the opposite effect, of making my need greater. I thought I was something of an expert on hunger, but this is an entirely new kind.'


('The Hunger Games - Catching Fire')

The relief

It came to me as a sort of a surprise to realise that although I've recently been dumped in a rather inconsiderate way, I feel better than ever.

Yes, it took a few days of feeling sorry for myself. Generally speaking my bruised ego didn't want to let go of the fact that a guy actually decided he couldn't even be bothered to dump me. So no phone call, no text, no e-mail, no pigeon, no smoke signals, no post-it, nothing. And I am a bit too experienced in the matters of the heart to start thinking he got hit by a car or had stroke (though, now that I mention, maybe he did have an accident or a stroke...) so I had to accept that he was dumping me in the worst kind of way, the silent way. Considering he confessed he had no tolerance for arguments, I reached the only possible conclusion: he avoided me hoping I would go away all by myself. Which I did.

I realised that being with a guy who made me feel insecure most of the time, not knowing how much I really mattered to him, was a torture. A torture which I gladly accepted in return for the good times we did have together. But a torture is still a torture and since being silently discarded of I feel as light as a feather. I feel that despite everything, all I really need to care about is myself and if a guy is not making me feel like the most amazing and adored woman in the world, he's really not worth the effort.What a relief!

May the odds...

Call me a hopeless romantic but I am reading the Hunger Games and more often than not my eyes are full of tears. I live this book so intensely that sometimes, when drowned in it and magically transported to the universe of hunger, death and repression, but also love and courage I must remind myself that I still do live in the real world.
I'm only half way through and I think I am in love with Peeta. I am so in love with Peeta and his quiet reliability, charming nature strong presence that I totally forgot about the guy I've been dating for two months, who texted me about a week ago that he would call me later and never did contact me again. Nor answered any of my calls... 
I'm so madly in love with the idea of a man who would sacrifice himself for me because I matter that much to him. And who would hold me at night in his arms with such protective intent that my episodes of waking up in the middle of the night with a sense of loneliness, desperation and hollowness (which sadly occur sometimes) would totally dissipate as if erased from my memory.
I'm almost surprised how many feelings get stirred inside of me while reading these books. I thought I had grown bitter, that I developed a protective crust around my soul which stops me from feeling anything anymore and that the only thing left for me to do is to look distrustful around and expect the next guy to do the same and get away unpunished. I almost thought I'd end up writing another bitter post about how coward and rude break-ups should be punished by law, how I deserve at least a bit of respect and how people should not just look at me and shake their heads saying 'That happened to me so many times in the past too...' as if it's normal!
Instead, I don't care. Because none of these men who can't look you in the eye (or at least press the send button) and say what they have to say to you clearly and honestly ever were men. Expecting them to act as they ought to it's as if you'd expect a donkey to win horse race. They just can't. And you can't be upset with a donkey for not having been built like a horse. Or get upset with the rain or the cold for making you feel miserable. They just exist... Your feelings are your own responsibility though...
So what are my feelings then? My feelings are that I am ok. I am ok and I know what I am looking for. I am looking for a man. And if there aren't any more out there, I'll just have to do with the heart warming image of an imaginary Peeta, but certainly nothing less than this...
Oddly enough I went to see the Hunger Games (the movie) with the same guy. And while I was entirely enchanted by the story (even by the brutality... after all, isn't it all a metaphor or the world we live in today,  yet we carry on eating or little sandwich on our lunch break when somewhere else in the world people have to fight for a piece of stale bread, without feeling overly appalled?...) he looked totally unimpressed. While I was hoping to share my enthusiasm with him all he wanted to share with me was a bored comment of how late it was and how the film was not well executed. Looking back, that's when I probably realised he wasn't the guy for me and yet I let another couple of weeks go by before facing that reality. Next time, promise I'll trust my instincts. They're never wrong. They are invaluable for survival... And may the odds be ever in my favour!

A tourist at home

It happened eventually. I got to that point when my visits in my home country start to resemble to any other trip in the world. There is a clear disconnection I now experience when I return for family visits.

I felt like that when I arrived in Bucharest at evening time a few days ago and despite the fact that I've seen it all before, after all I spent nearly 6 years in this city, I couldn't shake off the feeling that I'm just a tourist. Yes, there is a sense of deja vu, but sometimes I get that when I visit the same place a few times. A vague familiarity and yet a certainty that home is somewhere else.

I am restless every time I visit. Like I am a murderer returning to the crime scene. There are a lot of hidden memories that start creeping up when I return home and sometimes I just feel like I want to run away. I am more convinced now that I have to skip Christmas this year and hide somewhere random, like in the jungles of Vietnam maybe. Strangely, I feel more at ease venturing around the world and losing myself in the crowds. It just occurred to me that this must be the feeling people who are born in the wrong body must have... Like a stranger with their own kind...

I am enjoying the time I spend with my family. I still have a family and I cherish these precious moments: they are still alive and healthy and (here's when I can't help but thinking about the passing of time and that they won't be around forever) that they love me and I love them. But that doesn't stop me from looking forward to going back to where I no longer feel like a tourist or like an intruder: home, to London...

What is love?

I recently realised that I know absolutely nothing about love. I know I've been writing about it, whining about not finding it, looking for it, expecting it to come my way, all these things, but I don't know the first thing about it.

This only occurred to me recently and the reason is I have been dating someone for longer than a month! Yay, congrats to me! Seriously, it's not even funny, it's such a new thing in my life and it looks like I am learning as much about myself as I am learning about him.

I am learning that having been single for almost 5 years (yes, my dears, almost 5 years!) turned me into a selfish person. I want things to happen the way I want them (after all, I've been waiting for so long, I might as well get what I want and how I want it!), I want him to do the things I want and jump to conclusions because of my past experiences etc. I am also learning that I am pretty traumatised person and somehow I keep expecting things to turn out for the worst, despite everything going pretty smoothly. And that, to a subliminal level, I am creating scenes and starting up arguments only to prove myself that I was right: things would end up badly sooner or later. That, despite thinking that I am selfless, I actually only really care about myself and what the other can give to me...

Hard things to swallow...  But I realised that by facing this reality I may still have a chance to find out what love is. For now I am catching glimpses of it: liking someone despite their shortcomings, accepting that not everything and everyone is perfect (least of all me!), that things don't always go the way we plan, accepting I am not always right and that perhaps we should give the other person a chance to surprise us with some love instead of always expecting them to let us down...