This sunny Sunday afternoon I took the S7 back to Berne from a lovely brunch we had been invited to. It had been a morning full of good humour, great coffee and delicious Zopf-bread flavoured with the genuine caring of the hosting couple – for us and for each other. Watching them two guys occasionally grasping hands, leaning on each others shoulders and making compliments was like watching love live and celebrated in this house and it made me feel appreciated, too.

My little pink-capped friend of the age of three and a half was skipping on my right hand now. Just a quarter of an hour before I had played the dirty card on her promising an ice-cream in town. She wasn’t bad at the game, either, and earned a big chocolate one by loudly declearing I ha di ganz fescht gärn! into the full afternoon train. All heads turned and she quietly climbed on my lap.

I sometimes feel that what is generally missing in the streets of this country is the love you can see and hear. Hardly anyone is kissing in the middle of the streets, and if so, earning the looks of don’t-you-have-a-home… Its not that I necessarily need to witness burning passion in a pizzeria but somehow it seems to stamp love with an „Attention! Heavy!“ seal. I believe love is very fragile, instead, and deserves some space, significance and admiration.

I think in many ways love gets so organised by milestones of days it is living – the dinner menus, the weekly shoppings and holiday plans – and the milestones its supposed to be passing – the getting to know you, the getting together with you, the getting used to you and the that’s why staying together with you – that loving you does not get celebrated at all. The love that makes you giggle on the phone in a meeting, wear perfect make-up every day, put up with jokes from friends and family and fall asleep smiling every time careless if he is next to you or not and careless how many days, weeks or decades you have only had him next to you. Also the same love that makes you make decisions you have never made, face fears you have never acknowledged and eventually, cry madly in case it doesn’t work out after all…

But don’t throw sour looks on it, even if its cried out too loud in a crowded train, or if it happens right in front of your eyes and in front of the vegetable-stand. Its simply a little sign of its genuineness and in between your own planning of the week, why don’t you just celebrate love.

noun.
the tendency to seek distraction and relief from unpleasant realities, esp. by seeking entertainment or engaging in fantasy.

I must say I am feeling better. The pain caused by high heels, dependability and sleepless nights has diminished. I am not the overworked and underbred goal-determined bitch anymore. I have noticed I can be funny, even to myself sometimes, and I am happy to kind of start new and welcome the good old pretty-witty uncomplicated me.

Just when you think you have successfully escaped from it all, rented out your flat (together with the turtle in it), come to a foreign country where no one knows you and where you could basically say what ever about yourself, like that you have seven sisters or that you are allergic to parsley just to avoid it on your plate, BOOM! someone unintendedly reveals the facelift by casually asking you if you are a control freak. While cutting parsley, by the way. (Just a side remark - I loathe parsley). Can it be that this me still shows? Or – could escaping from yourself be merely a fantasy and the reality be that you never change?

When I was a child and boys at school teased me for my curly hair my mother used to tell me that everything goes by – unfortunately also the good things. I have believed in it ever since and it is rather effective on really bad things like PMS or havig your (or someone else’s) heart broken.
The parsley-guy then asked me if I new what I wanted from life. (No, no hope for an ever lasting marriage, he is gay, you see). And you know what – I think I do know what I want. I want to be able to say just that. I want to have the liberty of suffering from slight burnouts and enjoy the escapism once in a while. I want to keep the control over not having control sometimes. I want to get my heart broken from time to time and I definitely want to always have people like the parsley-guy around to remind you who you really are.

The reality is, we have these fantasies about the person we could and should be but we are seen through eventually, no matter your postal address. And what the heck if I am indeed a control freak – as long as I am not bitchy, stressed out and very ugly, I might just go ahead and enjoy my escapism. And as long as funny and witty people like the parsley-guy bother to ask you complicated questions you should be happy.

Just a side remark – I freak out when I feel that my heart might get broken. And I only have one but a very pretty sister.

There are three kinds of regrets in my experience: about what you should have said, what you should have done and what you should not have done.

Just before last Christmas I was shopping in London with Nurr and when we entered another clothes' boutique in Oxford Street, I saw a woman trying on an breathtakingly gorgeous white coat – it suited her perfectly and made an astonishing view. Until this very day I regret that I did not compliment her on how good she looked in it. I should have said it.

There is a gallery I pass every morning I go to work, the Dobiaschovsky's. About three weeks ago they opened an auction exhibition and one could see handsome gentlemen stepping in for a glimpse and old couples entering the house of the wealthy holding hands. Every morning for those three weeks I felt like entering this dusty and bourgeois gallery myself. I never did and when the show finally closed this Monday, the pain of regret over the lost opportunity was significantly vast. I should have done it.

I once was in love like a fool and he was determined on going out with me, too, I always said no knowing it was the right thing to do but feeling I should have said yes and when I finally did (say yes), I knew I still should not have, because due to several complicated reasons – most of them now seem ridiculous – we could not have been together and it was one whole set of regrets. What a pity that you cannot reverse regrets.

One of the most important men of wisdom in my life (next to my two brothers, my best boy friend, Mike, my ex-boyfriend and my best friend's ex-boyfriend) is definitely my father. He once told a thirteen-year old me that I should never go out with a guy out of pity because it is a cause for regret. Although at the time his words remained vague, I never really forgot this remark. I guess if I had ever acted against my father's advice I would be married with two children now. *And knowing myself – be probably thinking I should not have done that.

Now how the hell are you supposed to know in advance how you will feel after saying something, like saying yes to a guy asking you for a beer? Sometimes I regret that I know what regretting something feels, because sometimes I feel I am simply afraid of ending up having to say I should not have done it. But what if it leads to having to say I should have? So I have decided to try it out and next time someone asks me the question of whether I was doing something that evening, I would go for that beer, at least I will have said it. You cannot reverse regrets but in my experience, you can always hope for the best. I hope the next guy does not make me feel I should not have at once.


*/The what are you doing tonight-philosophy/