The concept of friendship

   Many people say that their friends are actually family as they have known them for as long as they’ve known heir parents or siblings, and have spent the same amount of time with each one. Some friends meet first in a park, when they’re babies, or because their families are acquainted. That is known to happen although it’s not the norm. Many people meet their friends later in life, when they reach the age to go into school. That place is the most common one to make first friends and to make alliances that would mark a person’s life, for good or bad.

 In my case, and like many people, I also made friends in several playgrounds and places of conglomeration. Kids have that innate ability to communicate with others, without all the contamination that we have as adults. They don’t see beyond a face and they make friends for life in a matter of seconds. Even if they only see each other once, for a couple of hours, they label the other kids friends. Why wouldn’t they? They understand that people who share a taste for something or a passion are friends and, actually, that’s what the base consists of.

 But as adults, we do not make friends that easily because we know a lot more about people and because we are more worried about been safe that about meeting new people. It’s not something bad. Some adults don’t have that protective sensibility and that’s when attacks happen, whatever they’re reasoning or lack of reasoning is. As adults, we don’t really make new friends. We meet people and bond but it is very unlikely that we connect as easily as we would if we were kids. Because we know people and we know what they can do.

 Nevertheless, we meet people and often share a connection. But friendship built on adulthood is much more sensible to changes and it isn’t likely it lasts very long. Why? Maybe because you’re not really evolving anymore. You are the same person day after day, year after year. Many people start being friends because they share a growth process and they need someone to share that journey with. But when you’re an adult, that journey is much more slower, less satisfying and not very thrilling to see, only to live.

 Although, the real key is to know on what you have based your friendship. Is it built on shared experiences, shared tastes, a likening for the same kind of people, a feeling of loneliness, a need to speak to someone, …? What is it that makes you someone friend? Many people think it’s because you share opinions but that isn’t always the case. It is impossible that two people agree on every single thing. Maybe on key subjects. Maybe that’s where friendship lies: in connecting in a couple of things you consider to be most important in your life. If you find someone who sees life the same way you do, on those two subjects, maybe that person would make a great friend.

I, for one, count myself in the group of people that don’t really have a lot of friends. How many friends do you think it’s “normal” to have? Some would say ten, some others twenty, some even might say only one good friend is enough. But, as most of things in life, that all depends on the person you are talking to. After all, we are not all alike and we all have different lives that make us different people. Besides, it takes a lot more than a couple of shared opinions to be someone’s friend.

 Let’s take my high school as an example. I went to a school were parents with an above average income would send their kids, so they were many connections on that level. Many people’s parents were friends so naturally their children were friends too.  Then, there were some people with average or below average income that had been able to pay for a good school for their children. Those kids were, strangely, not always on with the other. Those were the ones that felt the need to blend in so they tried to have a wider range of types of friends. In fewer words, they played it safe.

 Was there any bullying? Sure. It would be a very uncommon school if that hadn’t happened. It was always about the ones that came up as unusual: the very nerdy guy, the very nerdy girl, an effeminate kid, the new kid,… They are many types of people in a school and it’s normally very easy to put every person on a box, even if that’s not the best idea. But that is what the kids do. Girls, from a young age, know that it’s far better if they have an athlete as a boyfriend than the nerdy guy. Unless that nerdy guy happens to also be an athlete but that rarely happens.

 And men also know which girls they should date: the physically prettier ones because they need each other as prizes. If the rest of the people know that they are dating someone especially “hot”, then the other will know who is more important. Of course, we are talking about young people’s dynamics. They are many times vicious and calculating and they have learned all that from their parents and media. No one can wash hands when we see a terrible teenager in a mall or small brat in the park. It is a shared blame but blame all the same.

 I was the new guy. I was the new guy for about two or three years. They saw me as an outsider because, although it was common for new people to arrive, they preferred the ones that were outgoing and had something to bring to the table. I didn’t. So I was an outcast for many years in school until I made some friends. But we didn’t have a strong connection, like common goals or tastes. We only had one another and that was enough to be friends.

 The years went on and I made some more similar friends and realized the concepts had slowly shifted. It wasn’t like when we were fourteen. At seventeen, girls want to date the bad boys and guys want girls that have been around the block. That is the truth and the biggest truth about it all is that it’s all a lie. Must people, and this is a proven fact, have not have sex until after they leave school. So it is statistically impossible that every single person with whom I graduated, had lost their virginity. But anyway, people claimed they have had sex because that was the next big thing.

 Kissing, having sex, alcohol, drugs… You name it. I doubt that it was only happening in my school. All kids have that rush, a need for what has been forbidden for many years. And they love it or at least fake they love it because at that age what you do most is faking and lying. Whether it is to your teachers or your parents or your so-called friends, doesn’t matter. You just do because you learn lies can take you where you think you want to be.

 I didn’t really lied back then. I didn’t have anything to lie about. Alcohol was fine but I was not interested. My sex life was better that many other’s in the school, which is something that does not make me proud but I find funny. But there was no love, no childish romance. I never experiences that. I never knew how it was to feel that stupid feeling of accomplishment when you haven’t really done anything. And, obviously, I will never know.

 In college I had the best time of my life, no doubt about that. I started learning about what I loved and met people with whom I made deep connections. I understood how it is you build a real friendship, balancing those similarities and the opposing opinions. That’s when I became and adult. I did it when I realized how society works and I refused to play by the same rules because I had learned them and wasn’t going to play that game of hypocrisy and lies.

 My rule in school was to make time pass and not to attract any attention to myself. And I think I did a tremendous job at it. But in college, when I realized who I was and why I was that, I started not giving a shit about what people said or thought. I think many saw me naked, not on campus of course. I attracted attention to myself a couple of times and did not care. I felt free and all because I was happy. I had never felt so fulfilled in my life.

 Nowadays, that freedom is blurry. I have no job, no prospects; the future is bleak at best. But I keep the friendships built on solid ground and all that I learned while growing up. The friends that I made on sandy ground are not there anymore. To be honest, I don’t know if they are really friends at all. I like them and would never say anything bad at them but it’s the truth when I say we needed each other back then but now what made us be together doesn’t exist anymore. We have no reason to be together as no real lasting connections were ever made.

 Friends, in any case, are important. We need that connection with others because it’s the only way we built ourselves up and realize our potential and how we can make this world one worth living in.

Aegean Cruise

   Maureen Sullivan ran to the railing and held her hat before the wind had a chance to blew it off her head. The city looked gorgeous from there and, as she soon realized, the cruiser had began to move. It was just perfect, feeling the wind on her face, the smell of the salt water and the beautiful city, which began turning on its lights for it was already late in the evening. Maureen stood there for several minutes until she heard the announcement of a special dinner to welcome all the passengers to this journey.

 Maureen then decided to go to her room and change clothes for dinner. When she got to her cabin, she went through her luggage and started hanging some dresses and taking out all the shoes she had. She loved to dress nicely as she hadn’t being able to do so for many years. The thing is that Maureen used to be a nun. Yes. She had her calling at an early age, after being a devoted catholic for all of her childhood. Now, when she thought about it, maybe she had been too young and should’ve thought this more thoroughly.

 She decided to put on a beautiful purple dress with a matching purse and green shoes. For a moment, Maureen thought she was going to look like an upside down eggplant, but then she decided to go for it. So what if people talked? That was better. This fifty two year old woman had not being able to use such rich colors back in the convent, and one of the things she looked forward as she left her former life was the use of many types of clothing and makeup. It seemed shallow but it was understandable after more than thirty years wearing always the same thing, and the same boring shoes.

 She arrived at the dining hall just in time, as every single passenger was making their way into their respective tables. Maureen thanked God she didn’t have to look for a seat but instead only ask one of the waiters where she was supposed to seat. They had electronic screens where they checked it. After receiving directions, Maureen asked the waiter where could she find one of those screens. She was fascinated by the invention.

 A few minutes later she was already siting between a Canadian couple and a lady from Moscow, who was a bit older than her. She started speaking in English to her and, to her surprise; the woman was fluent and very educated, telling her about her life in the Russian capital. Maureen didn’t want her to stop but the show had started on the stage they were facing and it was too good to miss.

 As she watched the dancers, it was almost impossible not to think what would she be doing if she had still being a nun. At this hour of the night, probably sleeping or trying to at least. She used to love knitting and to embroider to calm her nerves, which always seemed restless. The doctor, one that came to the convent once per month to check on all the sisters, had given her some pills to calm that restlessness but she had never taken a single one. Something deep inside told her that she didn’t need that because her impatience, that weird energy inside of her was what she needed to keep on living.

 Maybe it was because of this, or maybe not, but she started to have blood pressure problems just after learning that her mother and father had died. A horrible accident and half her family had disappeared, as if they had never existed. She still had a brother but he never went to the convent to visit her and talk. He had gone to college, got a great job abroad and the last thing she knew was that he had gotten married and had one child. As the dancers finished, she thought how much she would love to meet her nephew.

 Maureen went on talking to the Russian lady and learned that her name was Valentina and that she was actually from Yekaterinburg, a city located in the Ural mountains of central Russia. She told Maureen about the harsh winters when she would stay inside for many days and enjoy lots of sweets because her parents said chocolate helped resist the cold. Valentina also told her about the trips along the river in the spring, when the water was so still and the flowers blossomed all over.

 It was just magic listening to all of Valentina’s stories. She seemed like the kind of woman she would have liked to be: limitless, doing what she liked the most, enjoying her life fully. It isn’t that she had hated the convent or anything. Quite the opposite: she missed the sisterhood that she had left there. If there was something beautiful about being a nun, it was the fact that they took care of each other, every single day. But, nevertheless, she thought she would have liked to enjoy more of life, getting to do more things in life, experience new things.

 That’s why, with the money she had inherited all those years ago, she had decided to take this cruise. She knew that a trip would make her happy beyond anything she had ever known. Because there was one thing she missed the most and that was people. Yes, she did do a lot for many people on the convent but always going back to those four walls, always helping but not really relating. That was her reason for leaving. She argued that God must want more of all of us, not only helping and be good but to be interested for real, to be there for each other. And she didn’t feel that she was doing that so she left to do it on her own.

 But first, she had to do this trip. With Valentina, she toasted with champagne and was surprised at how nice it tasted. She had a couple more glasses and talked with her new friend about both their lives for hours, until the master of ceremonies took the stage to announce it was bedtime. The next day they were docking in Mykons and he advised everyone to have a good rest to enjoy a whole day in such a beautiful island. The two women complied and agreed to meet at the dock the following morning to scout the island and buy souvenirs to bring back home.

 That night, Maureen was sad. She couldn’t sleep wither so she took out a small notebook from her suitcase and a pencil. When she couldn’t sleep now, she would also draw. She was not very good and didn’t do any drawings of what she actually saw. She thought the world was too beautiful as it was to be rendered ugly by her hand. So what Maureen did was drawing things that came up in her mind. She liked to think of them as cartoons although she didn’t think any child would understand them.

 A child… Her nephew… That still hurt her so bad, being cut off from her family like that. She had called her brother after she left the convent. Her idea was to visit him first and them take the cruise but that wasn’t possible. Her brother told her she had decided to be cut off from them for a reason and now that their parents were gone, it didn’t make any sense to fuel a relationship that had been dead for so long. He argued that she had always thought of herself as special because of her devotion and that’s why she got to go away. For her brother, she had always been their parent’s favorite child and he had to live with that until he left the house.

 Maureen knew that, on the phone call, Brian had tried hard not to be rude because it wasn’t in him to be like that. But he stated clearly that he couldn’t just forget all about his past to rekindle a relationship with someone he was sure he didn’t know well. So she would never meet her nephew or at least not very soon. She drew at least three pages until she realized it was past 2 AM. She left her notebook and pencil on the bedside table and forced herself into a restless sleep.

 The following morning, she put on a nice flowery dress and sandals with a white hat and sunglasses to go down the dock and meet Valentina. She had not rested a bit but decided she couldn’t spoil her holiday just because of one bad night. The two women walked together along the beautiful streets and up and down stairs. They separated from the main group fast and explored many shops by themselves. They bought some presents and Valentina asked Maureen why she was taking so few. Maureen answered she was by herself now so it didn’t make any sense to buy many gifts.

 At lunchtime, Valentina decided to stop walking around and invited her new friend for brunch at a nice café overlooking the bay of Mykonos. They had all the entrées, as a way to taste the most of the local food. They had fun asking what it all was and, afterwards, going to the archeological museum were they discussed art and politics. It was fun for Maureen because she had so much in her mind about so many subjects but she had never been able to talk to anyone about it. She had a lot of fun with Valentina and when it was time to get back to the boat, they decided to have a few drinks at the cruise lounge on the top deck.

 When she got back to her cabin, Maureen had also decided to call her brother again. She did so disregarding any special fees. She didn’t care about prices or times. Maureen had to ask for forgiveness and try to get her family back to her because, if there was something to learn about her day with Valentina, it was that people are very important in everyone’s lives because they are the ones that make us feel alive. And who better to share your life with than your own family?

We made the monster

   So do this: stand in front of the mirror, stark naked, and just stare. What is your reaction? What thought are gliding through your brain right now? Are you really looking or not? Well, this is a simple test to check you are a person of the twentieth or twenty-first century. If you are, you will instantly find something that you don’t like, something that feels “off” somehow. Is it your waist, your ass or your genitalia? Is it your chest, your face even? Not really important.

 If you can’t find something to change, if you just love everything you see, sir or lady, you are lying. Or worse, you are lying to yourself so hard you don’t even recognize truth anymore. And why do I say this? Because we all know this world we live in today has made us hate each other and has crossed the border to make us hate ourselves.

 But what is the point of that you say? Well, easy. If we hate how we look, we will spend thousands of dollars trying to look different, to be desirable. And society is kind enough to tell us what to do in each case: maybe the gym, maybe a full makeover, buying new clothes and maybe even change ourselves physically with the help of a doctor or some other “expert”. All those things will help us but, once we achieve what we were looking for, we will realize this new state of being is not good enough.

 Why? Because we can always be taller, skinnier, bigger, softer… Better, in the eyes of the almighty society that is nothing more than a bunch of people that want our money and our minds. Once we concede, once we say, “Yes” at least one time, we have already lost. We lose our ability to see what’s good or bad, what’s true and what’s false. We just don’t even care anymore because we have entered the social convention known, as the “community” where everyone HAS to want the same thing and everyone has to get it exactly the same way.

 Imagination is slowly dying, more and more, each day more and more pale and pathetic. Because we don’t need her anymore. We have decided that copies are better than an original; we have decided that one good way is better than many great ways. Today, being different is only taken into account when it happens to be a fashion statement, a way of saying you’re “crazy” or “unique”, when truly you’re just the simplest one of the whole bunch.

 Real creative people live like rats, hiding in the dark, trying to live by. They just can’t stand the world and sometimes leave it but others decide to stay on as a challenge to everything that exists. They make their own rules and they are left alone, because no one will really hear or see them. They don’t matter anymore and they use that to their advantage. When no one looks at you, you are suddenly free to experiment more and more, even if that new acquired knowledge is only going to be shared with a handful of other “freaks”.

 Still, the world is ruled by those who think that they are making a difference but, deep down, they know their actions are not important enough to matter in the grand scheme of things. Not that they are bad or evil. No, they are just ignorant and many of them are ignorant very willingly. They prefer this life because the less they know; the more comfortable they are with others. Who cares about the grandiosity of the universe when your boyfriend has a big dick or your girlfriend is a submissive person?

 And that’s the truth. That’s what we all think about because, at the end of the day, even the ones that still use their imagination are contaminated with the filth of a world that hates us for who we are but that need us to keep moving, to keep gaining wealth and power. How many times an artist has succumbed to the stronger will of money? It’s a very popular saying: “artists have to eat too”. And it’s true.

 It’s of the monkey act on the streets: you have to dance and clap and act like an idiot to be noticed, to be seen by the world and to be recognized, with money or food. If it was a world made by intellect, that wouldn’t be a problem at all because everyone would share and no one would starve. But we do not live in such a world. We live in one were there has to be someone on top and someone underneath him. Someone powerful and someone powerless. If that balance fails, they know things will go to chaos because we are simply not smart.

 Beauty is not a personal concept anymore and anyone that thinks that is gravely mislead. No, beauty has been modeled by society for a long time and what each individual thinks of it is highly unimportant. If beauty standards say fat is ugly, it will not matter how many fat actresses or fat models parade around the world. The concept of beauty will not change and fat girls will still feel awful looking at the mirror and living as who they are.

 Even if we know that the chubby guy in the bus is kind of cute, that doesn’t change anything. He’s still ugly to the eyes of society, meaning that we can be accepting but only if we decide doing that will be to our advantage. Or way do you think some societies have begun to embrace homosexual people? It’s not because they have realized they are also humans, but because they can be used as a fashion accessory. That was the way the gay man made it into open society: by being a mascot.

 Offensive, you think? Untrue? Just take a look. On every single society the example of a gay man is the man in the salon doing hair. What’s he like? He’s delicate, very effeminate, girly in every aspect and often skinny. That was the first gay man that got into society and, as it performed a role in it, it was welcomed but not with open arms but with hostility. Eventually he became a pet for the women that wanted to be beautiful, so they became tools to achieve what society wanted. They had a use, they could be used.

 And that’s is the truth behind the so-called acceptance of minorities. It’s not acceptance but tolerance, they let us be there with them, but they always point out how different we truly are. That’s society. Not a beautiful place where everyone is equal and we all hold hands singing. Society is just a place, a gathering of people that have roles to perform. It’s not about freedom or rights; it’s about how useful we can be to those that are powerful.

 Of course, that cannot be used to promote anarchy. Why? Because anarchy is the rule of the people and people are ignorant and stupid. If people, “real people” ruled, the world would be in an even worse state. Who rule us are rats, that’s true. But they are people who wait, whose power has taught them to be patient, to play the game slowly and to put everything on its place. In other words, we kind of need the powerful ones, because that power has taught them how to handle things.

 Power for all? Impossible. Give power to someone that has never had it and see what happens: chaos and even less freedom and truth. People cannot be trusted. And when I say that, I mean every single person in the world. Good or bad, that doesn’t exists. People are just that. They are capable of anything and nothing, at the same time and that’s why, when they are being oppressed, their own “communities” fail to act. They just parade around, faking an interest that disappears into the oblivion shortly afterwards.

 And still, when we take off our clothes, we still look exactly the same in front of the mirror. Even with all those minor biological differences, we are all the same. Even the most powerful is as likely to die as the weakest of the human beings. Even the richest woman can still be capable of carrying a child and even the weakest man can still infuse life into the world.

 Yes, we are equal but only in nature. There, we are all truly a group, a family. But we are not nature anymore, except for our birth and our death. Everything between those two moments has been created by the society, which is sadly made of people like us that have had a glimpse of power and that have decided that that fat woman is ugly, that guy with a small penis is worthless and that child that has dark skin will be a danger just because.

 We have created the monster that haunts us every day and now we are incapable to handle it. And that is, partly, because we don’t really want to handle it, we don’t want it to calm down or to be more forgiving. We want him to be what we are afraid to be openly: brutal and utterly human.

Adele and the Island

  Adele exhilarated but undoubtedly happy and eager to see and learn more. She was diving, not very deep but had been doing it now for about three hours and she had no intention to stop. So many beautiful creatures were there, so much natural magic that she had no intention of leaving, no matter what happened.

But at lunchtime, the rest of the team was famished and in need of food. Adele had to concede that she too was hungry and they all came back to port to have a nice dinner of shellfish and recently caught sea bass. It was delicious although it seemed weird to be eating a creature she had just seen swimming free in the ocean.

Adele was, in no way, a vegetarian or a vegan. She had no intention to be either. The woman knew that humans need to feed and it was natural to do it, as long as the resources were not depleted. In here, this small island just a few kilometers from the mainland, the consumption of fish and all other animals was controlled and they were very careful not to risk the environment, which actually gave them the money to keep their island pristine and beautiful.

The woman, aged 35 or so, had come here for good. She had visited the island several times with family, friends and past boyfriends and had decided she was meant to live there. She looked up for jobs in the island or near it and had found that the harbor restaurant needed a waitress and also someone who knew numbers to properly run the place. And Adele was just right for both jobs.

At first, Ron thought she was bluffing. He had established the restaurant twenty years ago and was very careful when hiring people to work there. He looked for people that not only worked but also loved the sea and respected the food. He had interviewed at least a dozen people, two dozens for both jobs and no one had caught her interest, until Adele came by.

She confessed she needed to get way from it all. The woman didn’t say her reasons for that but assured Ron that she knew how to make people feel welcome. Adele handled the owner of the restaurant her resume and told him she had worked with money before and had always been entrusted by her employers. As a matter of fact, she had never been laid off. She had always just moved on because, as she put it, she needed to keep on rolling.

Ron decided to hire her for both jobs but warned Adele that he needed both jobs taken care of very specially and that he wouldn’t be very happy if she left one for the other or left one of them unattended for long. He was sure she wasn’t going to be able to cope with both positions at the same time. It was simply too difficult.

But surprisingly, she managed to do it just fine. Adele was a dedicated person and, once she put her mind into something, she was unstoppable. She had decided to work the numbers when the orders got slow and even asked Ron if she could stay one more hour a day to leave everything in order. She rapidly picked up a nice pace in the establishment and was soon the preferred waitress of visitors and residents alike.

As she didn’t work the weekends, Adele spent them diving with the local enthusiasts that numbered around a dozen. They would leave in a rather small boat to a spot near the island, filled with fish and other creatures, thanks to the presence of a beautiful, unspoiled coral reef. For Adele, it was the best. She felt relaxed in the water. Besides, she also felt like an explorer, entering a new world each time.

What made her a great waitress too was the fact that she shared all of her diving stories with the people that came in the restaurant. Every dish they asked for was a short story told by Adele about a certain kind of fish or an interesting anecdote about diving. And people, most of them at least, really enjoyed her stories and even came back for more.

It was worrying, though, when she had no stories to tell or when she felt somehow “not there”. It happened rarely but Ron noticed it always happened towards the end of the month, the exact time when the mail boat would come into the island to deliver packages and letters. Any person living in the island that wanted a faster service could get a personal mailbox in the city in the mainland, at least sixty kilometers away.

When Ron asked Adele about why she seemed sad or simply away, she answered she would never put her two jobs aside. And so she did. Adele never let the work pile up, even in her “strange days”. She was a very responsible person. Anyway, Ron wasn’t asking her how she felt because of work but because he was worried about her. Both him and his wife had become very close to Adele and it hurt them that she had decided to be so private with her life, not telling them anything about it.

Eventually, they stopped asking him what went on with her mood at the end of each month. And it didn’t happen because they didn’t care but because they knew she would never say anything. So they just stopped and she didn’t even noticed. She kept on working and telling her stories and diving and being sad for no apparent reason.

That was until a letter came, almost one exact year after she had arrived to the island. Her many friends on the island, practically all the inhabitants of the small piece of land, were preparing her a party to celebrate her first year as an islander. The party was to feature the ocean, seafood and a case of beer specially brought from the mainland.

But that last letter changed that. The day of the party, she didn’t go to work. She wasn’t in the house in which she had been living in for the last few months and wasn’t diving anywhere near the island. Many people had seen her read the letter right in the harbor but, after that, no one really knew where she had gone.

Many said she had boarded the mail boat, arguing with the man that drove it but finally negotiating with money. Others were sure she had gone to the Big Tree, the only so called park the island had on it. It was really a small square of grass with, in the middle, a huge tree giving shadow to a couple of houses. It was a popular spot for lovers or people that wanted a peaceful place to think. Others said she had resumed working or gone to her house, but they were proven wrong very fast.

So, for many days, no one knew anything about Adele. Ron was especially upset, as she had left her two jobs hanging, for which he didn’t look for a replacement. He told his wife that he was sure Adele was going to come back, eventually. But as the time passed, that thought began to dissolve in time.

A young woman named Arisha replaced Adele as a waitress and Ron decided to take over the accounting duties. Anyway, the restaurant was fairly easy to handle and it was only during the holiday season that he really needed a lot of help to keep the place running properly. Anyway, Arisha was a very dedicated young lady and, although she wasn’t really experienced and didn’t tell any stories, she did the job right and was sure she could do better.

It was during the holiday season, in a really hot day, when the mail boat arrived and a letter addressed to Ron arrived to the restaurant. He was busy cooking some burgers so he only opened it at night, when he had done everything to make the holiday visitors happy. Walking home, he realized the letter was from Adele and quickly opened it, reading it outside his house.

In not so many words, Adele told him she was ashamed of herself and the way she had left the island, to the extent of leaving everything she had owned in the small house she had inhabited in. She told Ron that the reason why she had left had been simple: she couldn’t bear staying in one place too long. She had never liked that, even if she felt at peace and she certainly did in the island. Anyway, the real reason was that a former lover, a man she was going to marry once, would write her every month to tell her he still loved her deeply. She avoided him, even if she felt still guilty, until the last letter came in.

The man who loved her had suffered an accident and was in critical condition. Adele left everything to be with him but was not able to get there in time. He had died. She stayed, even if she wanted to live, to see him being buried and to see her family again. But that was just another signal to leave.

She wrote Ron from a ski resort and told him she would love to see him and all her other friends soon, in due time, once she felt she was strong enough.

-       “To be honest, I will never be strong enough for anything. I had no idea what I had around until I lost it because of fear and insecurities. Anyway I hope I see you again, wherever, whenever”.

Ron shared the letter with his wife and kept it in a drawer, waiting for the day he could see Adele again to talk and tell her it was ok to stop running, as no one had never been chasing her.