Without me here, this would all be unseen. Or if seen, undocumented. Or if documented, then not shared.
If shared, then not by me.

That’s what I tell myself when I sometimes feel like I’m not supposed to be here.
That I should have left back then, and that the reason I struggle so hard to find purpose and joy, is because there is no place for me here anymore.
But I know that’s the trauma talking. Depression lying.
Dark days whispering their dark words, knowing that in that moment I’ll be vulnerable enough to believe them.
And sometimes I do, but even in those moments, I still know that fighting to find my way back to life isn’t the same as being unwelcome by way of a glitch in the universal accounting.

I see people having accomplished so much in the last year, where I’ve just survived.
Sometimes barely and poorly.
I feel left behind and lost.
No job, no money, no passion, no reason to get up in the morning, except needing to pee.
And maybe make coffee for the one person whose existence is perhaps made better by mine.

---

In October we traveled for the first time. Since.
Sure, we’d been to Denmark a few times by bus, but nothing major.
Not like flying to an unknown. Oh how long it’s been since I’ve been able to do that.
Even the tedious airport routines were kind of fun at this point.

We went to his home, somewhere we would have been to together much sooner, if it hadn’t been for.
And so I finally got to see all the places he’d talked about, meet the people, eat the foods.
Get a tiny bit culturally shocked.
Breaking the monotony of Northern European sameness.

The trip was not relaxing. Danilo hadn’t been back in two years, so there was catching up to be done, and every day came with a strict schedule, something neither of us particularly enjoy, and we came home needing a vacation to recover from the vacation. Why is that such a fucking stereotype.

My camera lens broke towards the end of the trip, fair since I hadn’t had it repaired since a trip to Vienna around 2015, but it’s fine now, and ready for the next adventure, whenever and wherever that may be.
I hope somewhere new.
Somewhere that also have elderly ladies catching up over coffee on a sunny day. Or balloons that have been trashed too soon. Somewhere with tasty vegetables and letters I can’t read.

Some place in a state of beautiful decay, because that at least is honest.