Crossed Pathways

Often I ask myself what a graphic representation of my life and that of the people I have met in life would look like. The older I grow, the more I realize that the likelihood the path I've followed in life crosses multiple times with someone else's is high, and such a representation would look like an unorganized mesh.
As a little kid (4 years old) I had three good friends: LM, NT and NR. LM moved to Europe when we were in First grade, and over the years to Venezuela and Brazil. We met a few times while she was in Brazil, and after I moved to Europe we met twice in Switzerland. NR and NT finished school in Bogota with me, each of us chose her way, but last year NR moved to the same city I live in, after getting married to a German who got a job in this city.
At work we always say you meet at least twice during your career, and now that I have been almost 6 years in the company I see what it means: People I worked with during my first years in the company have  rotated jobs like I have and suddenly we meet again in different projects and roles, and in a few cases, also in different locations.
While I find it logic that even if there have been years since the last interaction, there is a common ground to start from in the new meetings, I have also realized that meeting new people who have had similar experiences also creates this common background to start from, and can even be a first step for friendship.
I have it easier to connect with travelers, with people who have a technical background, with people who went to the same uni I did, or with people who lived in the same cities I have lived.
At the same time, I struggling connecting with Colombians and with people who believe either in male superiority or in European superiority, even though those are situations I have been exposed to since my early childhood.
I consider myself lucky for the friends I have made over the years, regardless of what the reasons for our friendships are. It doesn't remove the weirdness of not feeling able to connect to my culture, the one I was raised in.

February 8th, 2013 Dundee

Maybe

Maybe it is time to start thinking again, or to stop doing so. Society has the tendency to dictate what is okay to do when and most of us follow its directions, sometimes willingly, sometimes without realizing we are doing so.
It's been a while since I last sat down to write, it's been a difficult time during which I did not even manage to motivate myself to follow my life, and writing was not really an option.
Looking back I can't point at a single event that triggered this phase: Maybe it was work, maybe it was the realization that I am now more lonely than I have ever been and lack the courage to approach new people. Maybe it was my 28th birthday reminding me of all those goals and dreams I had and I didn't achieve, or maybe it was something else.
Whatever the trigger was, reality is that my entire world collapsed: work, family, study, health and friends, and with that I lost control over my life and over myself.
How come I decided to skip carnival this year? Why did I decide to go skiing all by myself? Why did I  book a trip last minute for New Years? Maybe I am trying to escape from myself, or maybe I am trying to find myself.
If I look right and left I get scared at how fast things are changing, how my feeling of inadequacy increases by the minute, while I fail to point at the reason or reasons for it. Maybe it is the happiness of those who surround me, always reminding me of my struggle to accept my life as it is. It could also be the challenges at work, throwing me frequently into a complete state of hopelessness, or that spiral that caught me months ago and won't let me out: it just moves faster and faster and pulls me further into it.
Maybe I should try to start over again sooner than planned, or I should shield myself to my surroundings, so that noone and nothing can reach me. Maybe I should take one day at a time, and wait for the changes to come by themselves.

Late January 2013