Carmen

Let me tell you a story, that took place on a night in Amsterdam, where the hotel lights seemed to flicker in my native tongue. I was beside a lady, not my mother, but something deeper than all bloodlines combined. The kind of woman who doesn’t ask what weighs on you, but knows, as if you had met in a dream not yet deciphered. A being who doesn’t give you lessons, but gently steals them from you, sowing them in your soul without you knowing when or how. She told me, with a gaze that had been both storm and patience, love and war: “Laugh, child. Laugh in the face of time, and you’ll see—it’ll become your friend. Take it to dance and make it move to your rhythm.” And I laughed. Not to prove I could, but to make myself believe again. And that’s when I understood that sometimes the music fades, your steps stumble, and still... you keep dancing. I understood you don’t live for the dance, but for that one evening when someone saw you whole, even if you were only shards. I understood that life is meant to be lived, not just told. I understood that love hurts, but it is the most honest form of pain. I learned you can be alone, but never weak. That life doesn’t wait for you, but it doesn’t chase you away either. That it’s okay to be, in the same body, a child and a lioness, a queen and a woman, tired of questions and cheap chatter, but full of fire, a fire that would make teenagers pale with envy. I learned that elegance is not in dresses or words, but in the eyes of a mother who asked for nothing, but gave everything. That beauty isn’t measured in years, but in the laughter that defies the past, and in the courage to embrace what comes next, without fear, without trembling. That if you know how to wear your crown, time cannot touch you, and you become, unwittingly, a living legend. And that it’s okay to be a beautiful mad soul, to dance despite envy, to set out without a map, and to love again, even if you’ve been broken once, twice, or a hundred times. It was an evening. But some evenings, spent beside people like her, become silent eternities you carry with you wherever the road may lead.