Maybe I’m not a fish?
A lot of smart, independent, adventurous and incredibly dazzling women I have had the pleasure to have met, spent time with, laughed with and now follow wide eyed on instagram have undertaken a common sport. Long-boarding. The skateboard kind. Most of them to help them with their surfing technique. Others because, well, I don’t actually know. As someone who left the beach bum life quite recently I thought that maybe a long board on wheels could help me not lose the very, very, very small progress I have managed to attain after a year and a half of “surfing”. I looked at subito.it, a website where you can buy and sell directly from individual to individual, something not highly appreciated in a country with a mentality of the middle-ages like Italia. The best deal I could find was a twice used 100 EUR long board in Bologna which is around a 30 minute drive. It didn’t seem like much money. I thought I’d contact the owner the next day and see if I could get her down to 80 in cash and considering the add had been up for a while I was sure to have success. Then I remembered a very small yet essential detail. I don’t have a 100 euros to spend on a hobby I’m not entirely sure I’ll enjoy. I cannot invest this money on a whim. That’s all it would be. I mean, sure, it will certainly help maintain some sort of something of my surfing but very likely it won’t do much. When you’re out there in the water (I must confess I stayed in the white wash most of that year and a half) the experience cannot in any way be compared to curving and cruising on asphalt.
Realizing you’re 28, broke and living at home is an absurd trip. Let me explain for a sec before you start getting all hatey and judgey. I knew perfectly well when I turned 28 that I was turning that age and not 21 or 47. I knew I was broke…I have little to no money…I can’t live like I have money when I just…don’t have any…Lastly, I tuned in when I arrived from the beach life and put all my shit in the bedroom I spent the last years of my adolescence in. Yet it took noticing that I wanted something and that buying it would set me back enough that I would have to sacrifice other things to be like: “oh shit.”
I feel no shame. I’m very proud of the life I’ve lead. I’ve done some crazy shit, crazy shit I’d re-do in a heart beat. I lived and still live a life that’s unexpected and I love myself for that. I guess what comes with twenty eight years is also enough knowledge and experience to have a little perspective. That’s what I guess happened the night I realized that I wasn’t going to just get myself something today because I had bigger and better plans for tomorrow.
Buying that skateboard would mean I would have to work another 2 days just to pay it off. It would mean having an extra thing in my life I wasn’t sure I was going to actively use and get value from. It would mean giving in to that adolescent that whines and wants rather than the adult that is disciplined and focused on her goals.
As I put my phone down, I delete the number that would have had me eighty euros poorer, look out the window, alone with myself and my thoughts I remember: “didn’t I use to own roller blades?” I did. I found them. I took them out for a spin almost as soon as I saw they still fit. Did I suck? Yes. Did I fall? Not yet. Did I have a good time? Fuck Yeah! Now I have other micro-goals: get better at turning, learn how to skate backwards and twist.
This morning as I was doing my pre-breakfast laps I saw someone I recognized. A beautifully slim, tall, box red head that I’m pretty sure I used to go to the gym with. She’s around my age. Looks exactly how I remember her. Oh. She’s pushing a pram. There’s a baby inside. How cool, she’s a mum! Awesome! I hope. The alternative is a rather dull scenario.
Where the skateboard ode stopped the roller-blade tale continued. As I’m on my fourth day of, uhm, rollerblading practice? She’s on day, they baby seemed fresh so around 90-ish, of motherhood. Bizarre, isn’t it? I’m just going up and down trying to get closer to my micro goals as she’s pushing her life on a four wheel high chair down the same street. Not to say this baby is now her life, of course she’s an entire human being without the baby but we can all agree that her and this baby’s life are now close-knitted. I wonder what her story is. Was this always her plan? Did she meet someone at the gym? Is this where she always dreamed to be? Is this the result she expected out of her own life? Is she just following the rest of the salmon up-stream?
When I was 16 I moved from a very small, traditional, catholic town to another very small, traditional, catholic town…in another country. I left my mother, father and brother behind looking for something else. What? I don’t know, you have to ask 16 year old Sara that and whether I found it or not is still up for debate but regardless we here now. It’s common for small town folk to live like, well, small town folk. We tend to be rather predictable. We finish school, most of us already have the partner we’re going to start and finish a life with, we have kids and move out of our family homes to…next door or not too far from it. Get divorced when we’re around 45, get with and move in with someone else you’ve known you’re entire life and then die. That’s more or less the cycle of life. For some it’s all they want. Really, you’ll be surprised at how many of my friends are looking for that contract, that mortgage, that partner to tie them down and give them purpose. Following in the same footsteps as everyone that came before them probably gives them a sense of comfort. Maybe it’s a normal, natural thing to want and aspire to. Maybe thinking locally is the norm that has kept us alive this long. Maybe it’s people like me that are jeopardizing our very survival as a species.
Too far? Fair.
But it’s definitely a question I’ve been asking myself lately. The last 4/5 years of my life I’ve been vagabonding around the world without thinking about the future. Just living every day, one day at a time, figuring things out as they came up and not really thinking about, well, not really thinking about anything really. My main inquiries were: can I drink/eat this? What’s down there? How do you say this in whatever language? Living far from home for the last 4 years this sort of local thinking had become such a blur I could barely make sense of it. Being completely submerged now, head below the water, if I look up all I see is the light rippling and become longer and shorter depending on the motion of the waves. I’m forced to look down now. At what I’d left behind. It took a few days to realize that this reality, the one below the water is one I don’t fit in with. That’s probably the reason I had no difficulty in leaving when I did. There were no tears in my eyes that day in July 2017 when I picked up most of my shit and took a flight across the Atlantic. To live somewhere different, with strangers, not speaking the language, not knowing anything.
I guess fish have never seen what life is like in the open air, all they know is the eternal blue in which they swim in. Do they even know that there is an alternative? How is it that they swim in the same direction, doing the same thing, generations to generations, the same? Maybe I wasn’t born a fish? Someone dropped me in by mistake. Or maybe I was an asshole and they purposefully pushed me over some edge. I wouldn’t blame anyone. I kinda see why they would’ve done it.
I try not to fall over as I practice my right turns, slowly make my way home, take my skates off, rip my velcro knee pads off, walk into my grandparents house barefoot, leave all my shit in my room, put some music on as I get myself ready for my afternoon English classes, I look into the mirror and ask: what would I be doing if I had never left? That’s when I’m 100% sure that I’d much rather be here than there. I’d much rather have that awkward conversation saying that I’m back home because I made some decisions in life that have set me back financially and I now resort to the support of my family until I get myself on my feet. I would much rather put up with that patronizing look of: really? This is your situation at 28? than to be a fish.
Don’t get me wrong, I see nothing wrong with being a fish and quite frankly I envy those people that had incredible foresight and started investing young, bought houses, started their own businesses. I admire those who started creating and building there lives and now have something that’s tangible and theirs. I have nothing to my name. Nothing to say “I was here” except for this Blog and quite frankly hence the name. Yet considering that all my life decisions have culminated to this moment. This moment where I effectively have nothing. I think to myself: better this than that. The life that Sara who never left is one I’m not too curious about. That’s her business. Not mine.
Maybe everyone else feels like they’re not fishes either and they don’t feel like making a big deal out of it and they just get on with their fishy errands because there’s shit that needs to get done. Maybe I’m not just living a fish life but I am a fish I just haven’t figured out which kind yet. There’s no mirrors in the ocean, to be perfectly fair to myself and other fishly-confused bretherens.
I wonder what kinds of pages I’ll be writing in 5, 10 or 15 years from now? What kinds of thoughts I’ll be having then when I find something else in my attic?
Until then,
I’ll be seeing you next week,
Sarita.
