30 & beyond

 ...stressed out and tired One would assume one would write weekly blogposts about the excitement of a wedding organization. One is surprised by the lack of excitement, as one waited 35 years for this to happen. *** I wrote that four months ago. One would think life gets breezy after the highly mystified goal set by society of getting married and settling down. The truth is: absolutely nothing at all, in any way, has changed. If anything, my husband and I get to wink at each other every once in a while, knowing that we're now legally partners for life, partners in crime. And the crime is all the bs life throws at us. Where do I start, four months after our legal wedding and a month and a half after our big celebration with family and friends? I'm not quite sure what I'll end up writing about and for the love of whatever God you believe in, I don't want to throw any glitter on the turd of what organizing a wedding celebration really is. Let's put this all in chronolo...

 Life tends to make my story quite hard to romanticise from time to time. I'll try anyway. I feel ready now to pour it all on you; this is a raw summary of the last few months. Sit back, relax, and prepare the Kleenex. There are things in life - good and bad - that you know from society, media, codes in your DNA, will come eventually and unavoidably. You wait and wait and sit tight, prepare yourself for them in extends that you didn't know existed - and they still don't come. Until they do. All at once, because life probably knows that you're running out of time to fit all that into the remaining half. If I wasn't medicated, I probably couldn't handle it. God bless Zoloft. This is the story of how I got engaged. If you follow the blog since the start, you probably already know a lot from the last five years. The posts get more and more personal with each year passing, with a constant concept of unsuccessfully trying to squeeze some positivity into the messages I...

 The good thing is I'm turning 35 in a month. Pop the confetti. I was sitting outside with her in their garden in complete disbelief that life has come to this. It's almost funny. She's my age and we've been going through pretty much the same things at the same time since we were 17. I started to list all the health issues I've been having, the permanent ones and the current ones. Days went by. Children grew old. Earth finally boiled. Madonna dropped a new single. I almost even shocked myself with how long I was going on about it. She had some follow-up questions (as she should), but she was pretty much aware of most of them already. Then she did the same. Humanity moved to Mars. Madonna had her first grey hair. We sounded like two 80+ women just casually waiting for death on a Saturday afternoon. Then we slowly (back pain) proceeded back to the living room to watch more what-can-a-car-drive-over-and-what-sound-it-makes videos with her son. We were not forced to. We...

 This post will not take me any further from a perfect cliché. Sunday afternoon I enjoyed the two hours of summer we get this year in Luxembourg, and took a little break from the never-ending to-dos, to lay on the terrace floor and do absolutely nothing instead. Relaxing obviously means that I was on my phone the whole time, so I decided to check in with an old friend that was taken away from me by our wonderful economy and now we live a thousand kilometers apart. She's one of those few friends that I've had for a long, long time, we go way back to elementary school. She's also one of those even fewer friends that you can literally tell anything and won't freak out. Our conversations usually go from baking to suicide, from health issues to gardening, to childhood traumas from sex. There is absolutely no shame or judgement, even for a moment, in any conversation we have. One of the OGs, one of those very few people that I never, under any circumstance, want to ever, no m...

 Or How To Survive Holidays on Ibuprofen . Here I am, a proud survivor of a holiday above 30. Now that I live, I will provide you with a detailed guide about how to make it through holiday activities at this advanced age, such as; walking, looking at things and the Sun. First of all, let me lead by bad example. If you think that you can just work a full day and leave peacefully on the next, you are mistaken. So was I. It doesn't really matter what your job is, it will not get less stressful days before your holiday. But more. Oh, much more. If you end up crying in the toilet, it's okay, and while you're doing that, lift your head up for a moment to take a glance at that pretty face covered by mascara tears just to see who to blame for the unfortunate event. In my twenties, I could fly to Rome just for a slice of pizza in my lunch break and be back for the afternoon shift with full energy, but now... now it takes 3-5 business days to prepare for a trip.  But Vivien, how do ...

 I clearly need an audience. Duh. Yet another fun fact about me that took more than three decades to realize. Who says life isn't fun. I'll put aside the sob stories this time, but you can let your imagination run wild on trauma triggers. I find most people boring. There goes the other 50% of my readers. Don't get offended, I'm well aware that I'm way more extra, edgy and unpredictable than most of the people out there. With all its good and bad. I dedicate this post to explain that to you. Not that I owe you, but consider it as charity. Free old-lady-wisdom. You're welcome. I was raised to always look up to everyone around me and assume that they know and do better. Ironic, because I was always labeled the smart one in the family, but apparently only in situations when it could be used against me. No reader, no sob - bear with me. It took a disgustingly long time to convince myself that not (literally) everyone is better than me in (literally) everything. Then...