Home alone!

After meeting Sanja on our klupa (bench) and talking for some hours, I brought her to visit my place, for the first time. She was very well impressed: as she worked on a hostel before (Green Garden Hostel was a really cool place, too bad it’s closed now) and is now working on another one, she could safely tell me that this place here is really the coolest she had been to. And she was telling me “do you realise that you’re living the life that 99% of people from our age dream to live?”
And you know what? Even though I’m as happy as can be since I got back to Belgrade, I haven’t seen things through this angle till Sanja pointed it out to me.
And now that summer is getting to its end, it’s been a few days that no one else occupies the other apartments here, which means that I actually have a 130 sq metres apartment for me, and for me alone! I mean, how cool is that?!

I was living alone with my sister in Rio since my mom passed away, in February this year. And you know, living alone is something I always wished for since as far back as my memory goes. I remember playing “make believe” with my sister, and our bedroom was always my apartment, where I was living alone – never with a daughter or son (having kids is an idea that always freaked me out a bit, since I was very, very small), but instead accompanied by my “real size” stuffed Pink Panther. Sometimes my sister would ask, in a very mellow cute voice “Heeey, can I live with you?” and after thinking for a second or two, I would always say “hmm yeah, ok, you can live with me in my apartment”.
It’s kinda funny to think that it’s actually what happened to us: we were living alone and together (my sister and I), but accompanied by our two dogs and cat instead of Pink Panther, haha. And despite the circumstances in which we started to live our lives like that, it feels good to be 100% responsible for the apartment, having to clean it and pay the bills, making our own shopping and controlling the money, expenses and all. Of course it was hard to have to do it from one day to the other, but nevertheless, it felt good to have responsibilities. I guess I was yearning for that for some time.

First time I had the experience of living alone was during the months I spent in Newcastle Upon-Tyne, when I was studying in England. I lived in a house of students, where I was sharing a floor with 5 other people. But it was so cool to have a room of my own, going shopping and cooking my own food, cleaning and washing my stuff and all. Maybe that’s why it was so freaking hard for me to go back to my mom-dad-sister-and-dog life when I was back. I mean, imagine yourselves living alone for the first time in the country you always dreamed to live in, and studying your favourite thing in a great university? I was crazy about England at that time, and my first life experience away from my parents was nowhere else, but there!

After England (and my “post-England” depression), the closest I got to another “living alone” experience was travelling with my friends to Teresopolis, where we would always stay in a friend’s house (she was never there) and take care of the entire place, like if it was our own. And it was always SO great! Even cause I have this “leadership” thing on me, so I was always coordinating the whole thing but without being bossy, but in a nice way. Our cooking afternoons in Teresopolis are historical! And people still comment on the big Russian dinner I organized for 2006-07 New Year’s Eve and for the triple birthday party celebration (mine, Nara’s and Rodrigo’s). It’s been a year now, wow!

And now, here I am: experiencing (and loving!) life in Serbia, thanks to the pension that my mom left to me and my sister. How ironic is that?

I guess it goes a bit like a saying we have in Brazil (I’m pretty sure it exists everywhere else as well, just don’t know the exact words in English). It’s something like “God writes it right through tortuous lines”.

And it’s so true :)