I’m walking and thinking that I should text Beno. It’s been a while. Why haven’t I heard from him? I want to tell him that I’m grateful not only for our daughter, but also for him as a man.

Yes, that’s what I will say. But why hasn’t he gotten in touch for so long?

I wake up from my dream and I remember the reason.

‘People that grieve find even the smallest tasks very difficult’, – she says. ‘Let’s say all they need to do is open a document and sign it. But for them this task seems  overwhelming and it takes them such a long time!.. Could that be you?’

I stare at her. Could that be me? Am I still grieving? How long does grief last? When we lost Beno, I didn’t really have time to process it all. I haven’t had time since. Maybe I am still grieving.

As I keep talking about my dreams, my worries, the reasons that brought me here, she concludes:

‘Sounds like you are very lonely’.

I want to say that I’m not, but I stay quiet for a while. Am I? I’m definitely never alone, rarely alone. My daughter is (almost) always with me. It gets intense sometimes, but she’s my love and my best company.

So I’m not alone. But lonely? Sometimes I try to imagine my life without her. Yes, then I’d be lonely.

Not saying directly that I’m not, but not wanting to admit that I may be, I list to her all the people in my life: my daughter, my mom, my sister, my friends all over the world. But that’s the thing with friends far away – it’s hard to keep in touch. They live their life somewhere far, I live my life right here. Finally, I allow myself the tiniest of possibilities that maybe, just maybe, I am lonely.

I remember the webinar I listened to recently. It was about loneliness. They explained the difference between loneliness and solitude. You could call solitude ‘well-being’ and you could call loneliness ‘ill-being’. Solitude, put it simply, is when you are alone and feel OK or happy about it. Loneliness is when you are alone and wish you had someone with you.

I keep pondering quietly in my head.

It does not look that she is waiting for my answer. It seems that her goal is to try and make me think.

‘Why now?’ – she asks.

I tell her that I am here now because I decided to take care of my body, my health, so naturally I wanted to take care of my mind too. But that is not the entire truth. I am here now because I just had the best break-up in my life (and I never believed I’d ever use these words together).

He was here last March and I remember us laughing. There was so much laughter: while practicing BJJ in the park, while playing cards on the couch (you must say ‘oh… mamayo… bariba…’ in order to win the game, he tells my daughter with the straight face, then cracks up with roaring laughter), while listening to him explain to the 7 year old that her wish will come true if she rubs one of the statues in the park (this is what you tell kids, he adds to me, you make it fun).

All the fun aside, I realized that I’ve been waiting for London boy for almost 6 years. I had space in my life only for him. And he gave back. But what he gave was not enough for me. So I decided to stop waiting for more. I turned to myself instead and addressed the wishes I’d been harboring inside, not finding time to do it, not putting myself first. With that realization and the decision to act on it the weight came off my shoulders. I felt beautiful and free. I wished my past break-ups had made me feel this way.

‘What do you want the most?’ – she asks next.

I list all the things: I want a man (it’s probably the least urgent of my wishes, I add), I want a career, financial stability, I want sun, sand and the sea – permanently. I want to find the inner peace.

She says it’s possible to have it all, but not at the same time. And asks me again what exactly it is that I want the most. And I can’t explain it to her with any logical reason, but I want to feel the sun on my face (carefully covered with SPF 50+ and reapplied every 2 hours!) for longer than 3 months a year. I can’t get rid of this desire.

‘And what do you fear the most?’

I run through the list in my head again. No, it’s not the fear of feeling the sun on my face for only 3 months a year. It’s the feeling of uneasiness. I am afraid to stay stuck in this state of searching for something, somewhere, and not being able to feel peace. I don’t want to feel restless anymore.