RALUCA ANDRENACCI
Mentor
Life is unreasonable, not fair and never enough
I haven’t written in a long time for a simple reason: the experience to come was a very special one and deserved all my attention!
Long story short I had the biggest problems of my life, so big that I almost lost everything including… my soul!
After so many years of playing impossible roles and striving to deliver results and behaviours like those around me, motivated by the desire to have, without really knowing who I am; here I am, over 40 on the Adriatic coast in a small bohemian town, but that’s it.
I walk along a pebbled beach and wonder if I’ll stop when the left or right slipper breaks, depending on which comes first and I make the bets in my mind. That’s how I’ve lived the first part of my life in a total gamble to the end.
I just feel that I’m tired, but at the same time I feel that I don’t know how to live any other way and yet I encourage myself that maybe I have to get married again because this time I really love him. What would it be like to be one of the women around me here on the Spiaggiola. I watch and analyse their behaviours and dedication to their children, which although it annoys them they have decided they need to take on. And just like that the earth turns, another day passes and they will end up becoming banal and resigned. But now why are they so present and assumed, even time seems to have stood still? And …. and I’m jealous! That I don’t get it. Well, for the first time in my life I wonder why I can’t be like them. I’ve been jealous a few times that I can’t be a housewife or always present mama to my son. They didn’t all come to me at once. So I took them one at a time. I’ve been Daddy’s daughter, then wife, housewife, businesswoman, mother, and now I’ve come to face my own ego by not being anything. I made millions, then threw millions away, wanted and had, loved and hated, yelled and laughed! But in the end who am I?
I’ve come to want nothing because it’s all a chimera called social stress or burnout. You have it all and when you realise that you are not happy and it’s only a matter of time before it all goes away because you are not ready. And you fight and pull and attract and cry and crawl and get up and have fun and forget! And you lose and you win and you think it was worth it! There’s no alternative to being yourself. Accept, honour, cherish and carry on.
Yes, it was worth it to know you’re in the game! That’s it! Those who chose to play only one of the above roles won’t understand, those who are the puppeteers of their lives know what I’m talking about! Success isn’t definitive, failure isn’t fatal, what matters is the courage to change and move forward.
Seen as a whole the first half of my life can be a cruel parable about the illusory world of material dreams, about the complicated nature of inter-human relationships, about the ruins that choices leave behind, about brightness and sunset!
I can say now – it was an uphill battle, but I didn’t give up and I won and I’m grateful to have another chance to try new experiences.
What have I learned and what am I doing with everything I know? What have I gained?
It remains to be seen how I manage every moment of the rest of my life!
