Telling of tales

I've been mulling over this post for quite a while now. I feel like it's a little bit out of the norm of what I usually write about, which makes it quite tricky to put it into words while also still trying to respect privacy and keeping some distance between the internet and life itself.

With that said, however, I want to go ahead and make an attempt to do so.

As I've mentioned in several posts in the past, I've been struggling financially and living in poverty for quite the longest time now. I would like to open up a bit about that and give some more insight into my situation. But don't worry, things finally seem to be over and are in the upswing again.

Anyhow, to not dance around the subject any longer, it all started back on July 28th of 2012, so that's quite a while ago. My mom called me up from Serbia, where her and my dad live, and she told me quite some terrible news: my old man was in prison.

For my American audience the crime might seem more harsh than what it would be for, say, Dutch people. But to sum it up: he got caught with 2 KG (that's 4.4 lbs for you US folks) of weed. To put that into perspective of how much laws differ country to country; in the Netherlands you would get a slap on the wrist and you would be forced to some community work.

But Serbia looks at it completely differently. Over there, the minimum jail sentence is 3 years and it can go as high as 12. So as you can imagine, for someone who lives in the Netherlands, this all sounds quite absurd. Because it meant best case it would mean he'd be locked up for 3 years.

At the end of it all, he got 3 years, 3 months and 3 days. Luckily, due to laws and some more complicated stuff, he's getting out on March 6th 2014.

So, the reason poverty started after that is due to the fact that the old man's income got cut off along with all the extra money he funneled back here. I don't want to go into details as to how I stayed afloat for so long or how terrible the times were, because this is not a sob story. It really isn't. Promise. But let's just say that it was very rough and I ended up losing 23 KG (50 lbs) due to simply not having a lot to eat.

With that in mind as well, I would also like to thank all my friends who have helped me out during this time. I hope I expressed it enough to them in person, but if not, then let it be publicly known that each and every one of you are literal life savers.

But I digress--things were manageable during the early months of his sentence, mostly talking about the first 8 months or so. But then more bad news came my way, which was even more unexpected than the phone call I got from my mom back in July. Due to a chain of random coincidences, on April 6th 2013 I ended up discovering than my now-ex had been having an affair behind my back for 3 months.

Again, I don't want to go into details because this post does not exist to shame or call people out in a bad way. The circumstances don't really matter, the bottom line is that I was devastated and fell into quite a deep depression. I picked up smoking, sleep turned into a weekly thing and taking care of oneself was never on the agenda.

Once more, I want to regurgitate that I have amazing friends who were there for me whenever I needed them, no matter what day or time it was, who helped me through a lot of it.

Quite honestly, the next couple of months were a bit of a blur and I don't remember much of it, just that things kept getting worse and worse, financially and health-wise. But this brings me to the meat of the post, ironically, all the way towards the end of it; July 4th 2013, almost a year after my dad had been locked up, I ended up going on Omegle out of sheer boredom.

I can't really answer why I went there, let alone why I stuck around disconnect after disconnect just for being male. But really, did I have anything better to do? No, I didn't. So I kept going from person to person, not really getting past the any kind of introduction before people scurried off in search for the other sex.

But, good things come to those who wait. At least, that's what I'd say if it didn't sound so cheesy. But I finally found someone to talk to, and against all odds, it turned out to be a girl. Now, of course, I wouldn't be typing this if it just ended there. So you guessed it, we ended up adding each other on Skype afterwards and have kept contact ever since.

And for those with an even keener eye, who have been reading between the lines (or I guess, blog posts in this case) can now connect some dots of certain posts. And for those who can't or have simply forgotten my older posts, it simply comes down to me falling head over heels for her.

Now, I won't go on about how amazing or great I think she is, because this post is getting awfully long already, so I'll skip the gushing and fawning. But rest assured, she's brilliant. You're just going to have to trust me on that.

Of course, as mentioned earlier, this story actually has a happy ending. For her and I have been serious for quite some time now, and I can genuinely say that I'm a much happier person since I've had the pleasure of meeting her. Now, no one knows what the future holds, but as the Magic 8 Ball would say: "Outlook good."

So, to the special lady out there: Thank you.

The night is dark...

What is it about night time that makes humans think and contemplate?

Now, I'm not talking people who work night shifts exclusively and basically flipped the switch from day to night. But I mean when you can't sleep or just have to stay up late for one thing or another. Hell, even sometimes when just laying in your bed.

Why do we take this time to think about things? To reflect on the past and make plans for the future? But the weird thing about it is, it's generally very serious or gloomy, isn't it? We always think about the life questions, about the scary future or often about the things we regret.

Why is this? Is it because night time makes us assume the world is more depressing? The sun is gone, so the fun must be as well? It's a hard question to answer because there's things such as clubbing that only start once the night hits, so it can't be that. And what about the people mentioned earlier who flipped a switch? Wouldn't they be depressed and serious all the time, then?

Hell, even this post stems from the same problem. It's night time and your mind wanders to all the serious things in your life. One of my favorite activities is to sit on the window sill as music softly plays in the background, cigarette in hand and just looking outside--at life going on.

Remember, remember...

As I sat gazing outside of the window last night, I couldn't help but wonder:

"What makes memories so special?"

It's a weird question, no matter how you look at it. You never stop and think about it, do you? Memories. You make them constantly; good ones, bad ones, you even forget most of them. But what causes us to distinguish between certain memories? What makes a certain object more important than another one?

Why is this picture more precious to me than this letter? Why would I easily throw away this store bought card from one person, but not from the other? We don't even stop to think about it, we just know which items are more important to us than others. Why is that?

Is it because of the feelings attached to it? Can we truly remember more than being generally happy or sad when recieving a certain item from someone? Is it because we associate the person with the items they gave? But if so, why don't we treasure everything like hoarders? Certainly almost all the people in your life are important to you?

To give a personal example, I relinquished the things my ex-lady gave me back to her, I regretted it and wished for it back. She wanted to keep a picture of herself and a souvenir she had gotten me. I gave the souvenir back but I fought tooth and nail for the picture. Why? Why does that picture mean more to me than the souvenir?

And the answer is that I don't know.