sort of a confession

Let me tell you a few things. Let me tell you a few stories from a person who tried most of his life to find good people to surround himself with.

From the starters just to be clear this is more of a confession and I am not claiming any second that I am a good person but at least I am trying every day to be a better person and I tried all my life not to hurt other people the way I've been hurt, I never used applied on a person even if we were fighting the deepest fears and frustrations that they have once shared with me and every time I have tried to be as fair as possible and my biggest fear since forever was not so hurt anybody's feelings.

I've been in a relationship where the linkage point that made us connect was a similar past trauma. We've talked for nights and nights and nights and most of the time we were drinking more than a bottle of wine a night but we were lying to each other that it was ok. I realized the mistake but by that point, I already caught feelings and didn't want to mess up the connection as every time when I was a bit down or had any other thoughts she was telling me that she feels that she lost the connection with me, and me as a brave pawn in the great game of life I was jumping to try and reconnect. She was still keeping on social media pictures of her ex and most of her friends were calling her to give her updates about her exes' life. When I raised this point she instantly changed her attitude and told me that it was a part of her past and I have a problem if that bothers me. Now I am a part of her past and I am nowhere on her social media profile. At the beginning of our relationship, she was receiving flowers at her office and the funny thing was that it wasn't me so this was how I have founded out because the next time she told me after a while. Funny that she already kissed that guy so officially they were somehow in a relationship but she just left him for me. I know, lucky me why do I complain about this? well because if they did this for you they will do it to you also. But this and all other stuff I have swiped under the rug, my bad, thinking that love can conquer and fix everything. Towards our end, he chose to apply for break up the same strategy that I have told her I have suffered in the past just to tell herself a lie that she had empathy for me. She even used the most terrible line I have ever heard being told to me just to tell me that she is sorry she used it ( you'll find it out in the next mini-stories). Not even one week later she minded her life like nothing happened.

WAKE UP, NOBODY GIVES A FUCK ABOUT LOVE !!!

NOTE: the idea of sharing your experiences and being vulnerable is to create in your relationship a safe space and to avoid hurting your partner, especially in a way they were hurt in the past. The idea is that like this you can better understand your partner because guess what we all have triggers.

In my teenage years let's just say that I was on the very wrong path in life, and at a certain point, I threw a huge new year party at my place with colleagues from high school and friends from my childhood hood. It turned out very very very bad with some outside people that came with the clear intention to kill me. My childhood friends hid around the apartment ( 2 rooms communist flat, so you can imagine that rats might learn hiding techniques from them) and high school colleagues just sat behind their girlfriends. My luck at the bellow floor my neighbors were having a party with a lot of people also and I asked for their help, they didn't understand my panicked voice and only two of them came here we were 3 people bair handed against 4 people with metal bars and knives in their hands. You can imagine who suffered? us, no surprise, and the full staircase from the second floor to the ground floor were full of blood and all windows were broken. In order to follow the timeline remember that I had a girlfriend at this time, my high school sweetheart, my first love, details follow. One of the guys that literally saved my life, he came and fought with me 8 or 9 years later he introduced me to somebody with whom I had some business opportunities, he called me and told me that if I made any money from the fact that he introduced me to that person he is entitled to 50% when I told him that he is joking he threatened my girlfriend and parents for the shitty amount of less than 300 EURO. During those years you can imagine how many times I have helped him and I will forever be grateful because I am stupid that way.

WAKE UP, FRIENDS WILL FUCK YOU UP SOONER OR LATER !!!

NOTE: a great friendship is not defined by time (how long we know each other), is not defined by the hardships we went through, or supported each other. I think friendship is defined by common values and principles, honesty, empathy, and common interests/passions. We evolve and if we evolve on totally different paths it's ok for relations to turn cold.

The girlfriend, well, not long after the event she started dating and kissing my oldest childhood friend. The same year my grand grand mother ( the woman that raised me) fell to bed and I was also helping in taking care of her. The girlfriend came back with tears in her eyes that she made a mistake and I forgave her because oh well everybody deserves a second chance, right? A few days before my birthday she dumped me telling me that I am sitting with her for her virginity and ran to the seaside well she had her first experience with a stranger. And even before her, I was the dude who was running from virgins as I never considered that to be a sign of masculinity. 

WAKE UP, LOVE is such a passing thing, and male friends will screw you for a potential girl!

NOTE: we mainly all start in life with an open heart and then stuff happens and most people darken their souls by each experience they go through yelling afterward " I am a strong beautiful person", BULLSHIT, you are strong if you pass through shit just like all of us but on the other side you still have an opened good heart ;) otherwise, you will just act like an ass with all the next people that appear in your life. Furthermore, if people will confront you, you will put the magic blanket of Self Love and offend them more.

The next few years were a complete chaos of which I am not proud but I am proud that I have changed my ways and I am way above all that shit. People with which I was sharing the same meal and all the burdens after my first trip abroad to work asked me for money under the pretext that that's what brothers do. Before my second departure when I was sitting with them and they reminded me that this time I should bring something and when I told them that they are crazy and that I need to start packing for the next day and we should close the party they threatened to kill me after I threw them out of the house they came back with some metal bars and tried to break in. the signs on my parents' apartment door remained there for more than 10 years.

WAKE UP, there is no such thing as BROTHERS FROM ANOTHER MOTHER !!!

NOTE: the same as above regarding friendships and in plus I might add, choosing the right people around you it's a difficult task,  keeping and letting go of some of them it's even harder. But let me have a look at the people around you and there is a high chance you will do the same as them and you will look at life in the same way as them. I am not talking about the multitude of people that a person might know, I am talking about the closest ones, the ones with whom you spend most of the time. For example, if you are an entrepreneur and in your close circle are people who are not so friends with law and taxes. there is a high probability that you will not have a clean ship either. If you are in a relationship and everybody in your group is single that relationship will not be so long. If people in your group are engaged in relationships where they cheat and they have a rude vocabulary with their partners you will do the same as that is the standard of your bubble in which this is not something wrong. And so on. The idea is that if you want to evolve you need to break patterns, get out of your bubble, and find your spot in a bubble where you are challenged to be a better person in society not in your bubble.

After 3 years away from home I have experienced loneliness and sadness at its deepest and realized that what I want from this life is to have a decent life and to have a family. 3 years filled with way much more alcohol than you will drink in your entire life and experiencing all the possible drugs. One night I passed out in the parking lot, woke up, jumped on the scooter, and tried to get home just to fall several times along the road. When I woke up in the morning full of scratches I realized that this is not the life that I want. 

WAKE UP, any form of running will always intensify what your heart truly needs.

Came back home got a 9 to 6 job and 2 years later met, what seemed at that time, a good woman. First-year was shitty as she started the relationship with me while she was in a relationship with her ex and the dude loved her and had a hard time understanding what the fuck happened. He was just screaming for an explanation and only now after so many years I understand him. At the same time, one of her group friends was with another ex, a fucking asshole who the first time we met asked me how we fuck and it took all my patience not to punch him. At the same fucking time one of her best friends was fucking one of her exes and when I signaled this that was the end of our relationship right on my birthday because how can I dare state that this is wrong and what's my problem.

WAKE UP, you live in a world where everybody fucks everybody and that's super perfect and awesome.

NOTE: it's ok to try and date someone and realize that you don't fit but you are both decent human beings and you would better get along as friends. You never but never fuck with one of your friends' exes, people are not toys that you borrow from one to another, and then share details about the experience. Have some self-respect first of all and second of all if you consider that person a friend then offer the bare minimum RESPECT, if somebody does this and you are on the receiving end then for sure they are not your friend. If you just hook up with somebody and have sex once and you never had long conversations about intimate stuff, there was no relationship there, maybe maybe maybe later on in time maybe you can be like friends but not super close ones. If you were in a long relationship with somebody and shared intimate stuff and you know very close stuff about the other and you have memories together then for sure you cannot be friends. Why? because at the moment you broke up one of you suffered and one of you was ok, because when you broke up one of you had enough and the other wanted more; this applies to the people who sit at the table and they maturely realize that it's no longer working because even in this situation the one that proposes the talk wants to get out the other one was not ready yet he was just falling the script in front of them. People don't fall in love at the exact same time and they don't fall out of love at the exact same time. And yes you might ignore all this and be friends but if you plan on having another relationship just think how the new person will feel knowing that the person in front of them already knows everything about you, what you like what you don't like, know every inch of your body. You see when we enter a relationship and we fall in love we all want to be special to the person next to us because they are so special to us, we are excited every day about what we discover in that person their uniqueness their good parts, and their bad parts. Allthough we are aware that each one of us has a background we blindly ignore that in order to rejoice in the brand-new discovery journey. If a former special one (not just abasic ex but a special person) is there and constantly shares memories about your past together it closes doors for the new person it doesn't allow them to see your reactions in certain situations because somebody else is telling them that not even you. It closes the door to trying new things with you maybe even for the first time for them because they already find out from your former special one that you did that. Just to close the note it's like when you buy an SH car, it's new for you and you enjoy it and you discover the buttons and the maneuverability and you are enthusiastic about it, would you want the former owner to be there and tell you what every button do and to tell you hey if you go over 60 you will feel the kick down and that's when the experience it's awesome and so on? It's not about being jealous or not having self-confidence it's about loving someone and when you love someone you like to think that they are telling you the most beautiful I love you that they are trying some experiences with you for the first time and so on, although most probably it's not the case this is the beautiful dream of love and you don't want around a constant reminder that it's not the case.

2nd NOTE: A lot of people say that a man and a woman can't be friends and they are so wrong. We are basically animals and when 2 people first meet someone one of the two was attracted to the other but then they realize their connection it's a friendly one. Boom you can be friends. There's a catch here, you can see that person as a friend but do they see you the same, or if they would have the opportunity they would jump on it? There was an online trend at a certain point in which females and males were calling out of the bloom their opposing sex friends (while their partner was next to them) and they were telling them that they just realized that they should hook up and it was a mistake they didn't do it till now or that they should repeat it if they have history. How many of you have the courage to do such a test?

Getting back to the stories, the same girl came back half a year later and we got back together because I was still in love with her and during those months yeah I dated a few girls but I couldn't take it a step further (sex) with none of them. She proposed I said yes we got married, she cheated while accusing me of cheating took me through an emotional hell, forgave her, we tried and finally we divorced.

WAKE UP, LOVE without respect and loyalty it's nothing, and sooner or later it will not work. You cannot make people care for your feelings and to treat you with kindness by loving them more, you simply cannot.

Along the way, I've lost people that told me that they are my friends, that we are brothers, girls who told me they love me and in some cases, I had the capacity to open my eyes and tell them they are in a hurry to use big words while in other cases I jumped in and believed their words with all my heart. For more than 10 years I had a friend and who was constantly talking about what it means to be a man and about respect and it always sounded to me that we have the same values. You know that saying that if we are friends you will defend my name when I am not there? At a certain point, he made some new friends and the moment when I met them also came, it shocked me when after a few glasses they told me "Hey, you are really cool and smart, X told us a lot about you but from his stories, we thought that you are the stupidest person possible that you keep around to have somebody to make fun of", COOL. What did I do? well, I forgave and lied to myself that maybe he shared some funny stories in which we were both stupid and they got it wrong, after all, we were talking about one of my best friends that stood by me in some very hard moments of my life, a person with whom along the years I shared good and bad, food, businesses, true friends. Years passed and this type of scenario in which I was not feeling respected became more often till a certain point when I entered a relationship and just because he was not able to understand what's her job he started making fun that she is a cashier, I was able to digest anything but not respecting the person next to me is where I draw a line. The relationship with that girl was already at the end and when I confronted him about his lack of respect he told me that I am overreacting as that was a joke (a constant very rude one) and why does it matter as I am no longer with that girl. You can imagine I was not happy about the full situation and also about losing the girl but what hurt me the most was that as he left the room he turned towards me and he told me well, I am happy you broke up.

WAKE UP, RESPECT It's hard to come by, people will not respect you if you respect them.  No matter the relationship with somebody most of the people when you will tell them how their actions and words made you feel, they will make it about them ignoring that you came with calmness and just shared how they made you feel.

NOTE: if somebody comes with calm and tells you with details how your actions or words made them feel it means that they still trust you, it means that they want to repair the situation, it means that they love you, it means that they don't want to lose you, it means that they just feel hurt and they want you to know and eventually telling them that you are sorry, it means that inside their brain and soul, they already found an excuse for your wrongdoings. It doesn't mean that they attacked you, it doesn't mean that they accused you of anything, it doesn't mean that they are frustrated, it doesn't mean that they have past issues that they didn't fix. Respond with calm and love and warmth just like they came towards you if you still value them as a person otherwise just be a decent human being and shut up and then move on. The same applies to couple relations and if only people would be capable of not making it about them like the narcissists that they are (sorry, self-love experts) we would have more pleasant and strong relationships.

I was in a relationship where I instantly felt a connection the moment I met her. Everything seemed too good to be true till the first actual face 2 face date where she talked more about one of her exes than about her, ignored and put it in the context of the stories finding a normality in this. The second date came and the dude called her and again I heard stories about him and his life, ok I understood that they are friends now he has some issues and she is a good friend being there for him. She assured me and told me that I have nothing to worry about and she even planned a dinner with him where stories unfolded about their past relationship, you can imagine that from that point my attitude changed but decided to approach the issue the moment I was calm and I was able to explain it. Said and done, it seemed that the discussion worked out well although my disappointment was there and I was still feeling uncomfortable about it so I tried talking a bit about my past in order to better explain where I am coming from and why some situations are triggers and I need her to navigate together with me beyond this type of situations but she was not opened to listen to it and changed the topic saying that the past doesn't matter and just the present. This was making so much sense to me but it remained with me how does my past doesn't matter but she can share and carry around her past. The decision was to handle this with love and patience as this is what people need to let go of certain things or to realize stuff about them and make their life better for them not for the other. Things went well from that point till the first fight in which as I was not yet clear with everything I decided to walk away instead of answering back with aggressiveness. Bad call I admit, oh well I am not perfect, and just like every human being I have my fair share of mistakes and shitty moves. Admitted my mistake, apologized for a few days, and tried to get into a conversation with her, but no luck. She decided to go out in the club and just because my friends were there she expected that I will be there also, I wasn't, she decided to entertain herself and to talk to some guys in the club that were hitting on her. The next day I was there also and we got back together but when I told her about the guys she talked with she answered that she was single so what is the issue. Fair point somehow although just before the fight she told me "I love you" and I really don't think love works that way. From that point, this situation without being discussed changed my attitude and I was constantly searching for the moment and for a way to open the topic again but in a calm manner because love was there from my side and I didn't want to offend or hurt her also just because I was feeling hurt. I didn't find the best method and this offended her a lot and she decided to walk away. We talked and talked and talked, well actually she talked talked talked making me the bad guy and I was just trying from point to point to repeat the same few things that bothered me and saying every time that they are fixable if we talk about them. One night we talked and reached a calm point and ended up hugging and falling asleep together and 2 days later she told me that she misses me and after 2 days later she told me that she is with somebody else. It ended.

WAKE UP, people don't put the same value into "I love you" as you do.

NOTE: I am the strongest supporter of doing and saying what your heart feels and being as authentic as possible. At the same time, I really think that this comes with a responsibility, the responsibility of our words and actions and the impact it has on the ones around us. There are a lot of saying around this but probably the best one is " Don't do to another what you wouldn't like to be done to you".

CLOSING LINE

Lessons learned or not. The first half of this year was absolutely horrible for me but I realized that despite all the stuff that I've been through throughout my life ( many many more than the short above stories, stories which were depicted and changed as I don't want to hurt anybody) I have always had my heart opened and offered everything like nothing ever hurt me. I have treated every person that came along with respect and love and fairness, if I didn't feel the connection I didn't advance because I always said that I will break the cycle every time and I will never hurt other people like others hurt me. I always believed that LOVE is the strongest force in the universe and it's the only thing that I can give to a potential partner or my friends. Loyalty and empathy were the fundaments of all my actions every time beyond any conflicts as I always thought that solutions come from these values with a sprinkle of love. 

The world would be a better place if we would all be considerate (this includes kindness, empathy, love, respect, and so on) with everybody around us as we never know what internal fights each of them has and one good/wrong gesture or word might be the courage to keep going or the closing chapter. 

For the time I am congratulating the new world with all their self-love raised to the selfishness level, I cannot fall in your lines. You won, I am tired and I need some rest for my soul, all my love and good intentions (sometimes wrongly shown but with a clean heart) have hit way too many walls and have been used for the wrong purposes way too many times, this was never a reason for quitting and it never should be. Thank You and Congratulations!