Shrek pulls me out of the silver cage

For New Year’s Eve, I had a hunch that something was about to happen in the upcoming year, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what specifically. It’s effortless to say that I wasn’t prepared for what the goddess Fortuna had in store for me, and how I would find myself having to overpass treacherous waters on a very crappy raft held together by what seemed to be ice cream picks with chewing gum. Metaphorically. Maybe.

Much like Aeneas, I didn’t have much clue where I was drifting. After yet another failed attempt of finding someone who I wanted to make me feel complete, emotionally reassuring, heck, even utopically liked for my hobbies, much like a human Shrek…I had only bumped into Prince Charmings, who were rather hiding their flows and insecurities behind phony small talk…Alas, another bloke who had aborted the relationship…ship. Of one thing I was certain: I wasn’t quite sure what I was really looking for in someone; I didn’t quite believe in the notion of a long-term relationship, given my previous experiences which didn’t last quite as much (thank goodness!), and frankly, the ones I had been on might’ve had a better chance if they had been picked by a blind girl, rather than by someone (such as myself) who just wanted to walk in their older sibling’s shoes, and/or fall in line with everyone else, be one with the trend. When one of my former toxic relationships dented my self-worth and self-esteem, I had to recover for around 2 years before I got back in the surfing game yet again amidst the whirling waters and hidden sharp boulders underwater…I wouldn’t have to inflate the term “man” to keep myself afloat on it, nor fake myself liking them, by letting myself get drowned by their hogwash stories little by little. At one point I had given up the whole ideal completely…

But enough of that mushy stuff. Let me take you through those months which have led me to the total upheaval of my life. This was at the beginning of my final year of my master’s degree. From a career stand point, I wasn’t doing bad, but neither did I want to have a golden statue of me erected in front of the university’s frontage. Truth be told, I had always been the type to follow my own unpaved path; working at it stone by stone, whilst completing the given chores. In order to build this paved sidewalk, I begun by making myself a tad bit known through the research I had written throughout the years on (somewhat) enticing topics such as the on-going war between Russia – Ukraine, or the Kosovar war in 1999 and this novice state’s depiction in mass media…

Furthermore, by the beginning of March, I had managed to get hired by a translation office as a part-time English translator and reviewer of judicial documents, medical, or even educational on some occasions, so I had this way a source of remuneration…Work wasn’t rewarding, it was an all-female work place (yikes!), crammed, and the frosting on the cake was the fact that my boss was working vis-à-vis from my desk and monitor, throwing me a glare and slightly annoyed remark whenever she caught me at the slightest point glimpsing at my phone. So, one could say school and work were at least covered. What about the rest?

I was on a group for a national geek convention, which I had gone to pretty regularly with my elder brother and my sister-in-law, however this year they were too caught up in their own wedding plans. One day, at the beginning of the month of April, I saw a post on that group in which a guy wrote in a rather shy, but cool tone that he was looking for some friends to go out with for the upcoming comic con convention. In that moment, I had a tingly feeling inside my heart, some invisible force beckoned that I respond to this individual, despite the Medusa which was standing right in front of me.

The post was overflooded by a lot of unknown faces, alongside mine, to which he responded with promptitude to each and everyone of us. Insecurities and past trauma reared their snaky heads, so at first, I was skeptical of including him onto my facebook profile (which was solely personal), and instead directed him towards my Instagram; no face, no name, no mamb…I mean number there, just all my artwork garnered in one place.

One discussion led to another, and in a short period of time we discovered that we surprisingly had a lot of things in common: hobbies, a similar sense of humor, quite a similar timeline, and most of all we would find ourselves writing to each other for hours without getting bored of each other’s company…Come hell, high waters or an alien invasion, I’d stay glued to the phone writing to him, and same for him on the other end. Little did I know that he would eventually make the bold move for us to become a long-distance couple, the first and last man that I have ever known, that changed my perception over relationships and unlocked from the bellows of my heart and soul a deep nurturing desire, of dedicating myself to us. I had begun to do more house work, put on a show when he’d come to frequently visit me from a 300 KM journey by train, in five hours he’d arrive to the concrete jungle that was the capital city in which I lived to grab a cab and devour the poor fridge in his famished wrath.

He’s helped me through a lot, overcome some of the rockiest moments in my life, be my partner, a dashing gentleman sporting the cleanest, matching suit to my dress at my brother’s wedding. Remember the translation office I had mentioned above? It turned out that after three months of keeping me assigned to the other coworker’s unfinished drafts, I got a notice of dismissal, justified as a “reduction of their work volume”. My former boss was onto tricky schemes, I’d found out later, such as hiring newcomers for a three-month probation period to finish their work, and justify their activity as “too short of a time period to hand in a qualification”. To add insult to injury, because it was a small firm, my remuneration was added to my bank account by her physically, and there were “occasional” delays each month. The final straw that broke the camel’s back was when I had been given the notice, told in a sardonic tone that she’d hand me the rest of the legal documents (albeit I had initially insisted to her to write me my hiring contract, so my lack of trust was somewhat understandable), and didn’t expect that I’d bring backup.

Why do I mention something that’s nothing new on the job marker? Because HE, my boyfriend looks like a bodybuilder, besides being a law school graduate. Double trouble for the swarm of wasps that were my ex-coworkers and boss. Thus, I got all my documents in a breeze, and afterwards we went to paint the town red.

At this point you’d think the happily ever after rolls in, much like a red curtain at a theatre. Nope. The most treacherous waters of them all were my own parents, especially my mother. She grew more and more distant of me, mostly because she didn’t agree with my boyfriend’s place of domicile, nor did she want to meet his parents, and outright informed me that “it’s not mandatory that I meet them in this lifetime”. Luckily, I didn’t follow through with this advice, and at my boyfriend’s request I went to meet the in-laws.

It’s safe to assume that she didn’t grow fond of him, whereas my father saw a reminiscence of himself in his youth in him. My brother and sister-in-law saw him in their laconic terms simply as a “good guy”.

All this time, my mother and I were constantly squabbling, had frequent disagreements, was witness to some preposterous propositions such as him rearranging his room to her liking, aspects which didn’t sit well by me. Not to mention, but actually mentioned: her overall disdain in my own evolution, failing to see that her daughter had grown into a woman and wanted to start a new chapter in her life.

After leaving the translation office and presenting my dissertation paper, I got hired at a multinational office in one of the most renown districts from the capital for its booming IT & Business offices, also known as the corporation lane. I got hired at the beginning of August, and now I was in October. I had been announced that the company was moving its headquarters to India and that we didn’t have much time before I had to find a new job place. Whilst at the surface the water remained calm, in its depths tension was bubbling much like a geyser, the turmoil grew exponentially and the climax came when I was having one of the most stressful weeks at my new job post.

At the end of October, I came down with a rash from something I ate at work, an allergy which didn’t go away solely with my mother’s “recommended teas and over-the-counter treatments”. Instead of helping me get up and encourage me, my mother metaphorically kicked me while I was down and poured her worst insults, she cast dirt at me for “ruining her life”. She stormed out of the studio not even flinching, nor looking behind at how devastated she had left me…In my desperate time of need, I called HIM, my boyfriend, told him everything that had gone down, and, to my surprise, he booked a ticket for the closest train, and arrived in the capital at almost midnight. In all my years, I’ve never had anyone so dedicated to me (including my parents; my father was almost always pushed by my mother to do certain things for his children, thus why I had more or less daddy issues, and despised meek men like him…Albeit ironically, he was an army officer).

Witness to the withering relationship with my parents, my boyfriend proposed that I move in with him. At first, I thought that there wouldn’t be enough accommodation, nor the same facilities that the capital city provided. From my reluctance of leaving the capital to accepting his help, I had gone a long way to appreciate the easiness of life, as well as letting Shrek pull me from the silver cage in which my parents had kept me for all those years.

Leaving the silver cage alongside him was a feeling of reborn, freedom and renewal of my spirit, delving into life head-on for the first time, without feeling strings attached to my back by my parents. No more overbearingness, spying, nor manipulation attempts, which hadn’t been few across the years. The key to this silver cage had been left in the iron mailbox (it was my brother’s studio in which I’d lived for 2 years, after claiming it with a Herculean effort from my mother, and my family setting an agreement with my brother during the period of my stay – which was estimated to be no less than 20 YEARS as to pay off his bank debt integrally, and to eventually be kicked out of it with no second thoughts).

To this day, we have times when we say the exact same thing simultaneously, and we get weird looks because of this, but we shrug it off. We are more than convinced that we’re soulmates from a previous life (or perhaps this one) that longed for one-another all this time, have finally met and formed a whole. The silver cage vanished in the whirlpool of life’s stream, whilst Shrek and Fiona drove off into a new horizon, beginning a new chapter of their lives together.