A Different Kind of Bookish Wrap-Up

I can vaguely remember myself exactly one year ago. Content, after a very eventful year, full of expectations from myself and the others, sickly caught in other people´s nightmares. I was moving on, the right foot in the front of the left but things were not right though. I had a moonshine smile and no one was around me to warn me that some things may not be completely right with me.

And life continued to go on. I was planning my trips, enjoying weekends away and writing about it, pursuing my parenting goals and getting distracting by peculiar dating. I was randomly reading about a new virus and reminded bravely that I survived SARS in Asia a couple of years back so nothing to fear about. I kept having respiratory arrest once in a while but at the end of every bout, that were becoming more and more frequent, I was congratulating myself for surviving it. I was in pain but the Ibuprofen was helping me and was grateful for the rarer moment when I was pain-free, able to fully breath and in full control of my body.

Day after day, my situation and the world´s peace of mind were rapidly deteriorating. By mid-February, I was caughing and was unable to walk more than five minutes without taking a break. News about people who were starting to die because of the COVID 19 were more and more intense. I gave up going to the office any more and started working from home, because my physical strength was almost nonexistent. I was losing weight, and I needed a very long time to reach my apartment on the third floor. 

Meanwhile, I kept reading and reading and learning a new language. My intellectual activities were keeping me distracted from the abyss I was slowly and almost willingly drowing. In the long nights when I was unable to sleep because of the pain and the constant sweating I always kept the tablet near my bed. I kept taking notes and was seriously evaluating my German writing skills that were slightly improving. 

Mid-March I was hurried to hospital, with a slim 20% chances of survival. I haven´t been informed by the prognosis but it was common sense that by delaying with almost one year a proper investigation into the cause of my sickness I was slowly killing myself probably because I was too much in love with myslelf and unable to understand and accept what was going on with me in the last four years of stress and pressure and more or less real scenarios so similar with Not Without My Daughter scenario, only that the action was taking place in a different country and I was a little bit smarter than the woman protagonist of this movie/book. 

What mattered the most in the time between March and April was how to get back to life. What kind of life was expecting me? For how long? How I was about to survive me and my son? From the hospital bed, I was chatting on WhatsApp with my beautiful friend Monica Bhide who kept sending me words of encouragement and bookish inspiration. I was not able to talk again yet, and no one knew for sure if and when my voice will return, but writing was always my second nature so I kept writing and communicating with the doctors and nurses with pen on paper. Shortly after waking up at the ER, I requested my laptop and tablet and kept in touch with the outside world. But more importantly, I was reading book after book, measuring my long days and the intervals between the early morning and early evening checkings through the books I was reading. Yeah, finally I had enough time to read and catch up with authors outside of my comfort zone and I was grateful for it.

Gratefulness was my state of mind: grateful every morning for the beautiful panorama from the 19th floor of the Charité over a Berlin whose streets were empty during the lockdown. Grateful for the generous nurses that were taking care of me and were bringing me extra expensive creams for my dried hands and were massaging my died muscles, for the short ergotherapy exercises, even for the painful waiting to get my MRT and other radioactive checkings. 

After one month, I was released for a couple of days, and was finally reunited with my little family, walking the streets, doing some shopping and finally reading from my bed. My smile ceased for a long time being a cartoonish facade hiding my feelings and disappointments. I was able to smile from the bottom of my heart, because I was on the right way, and surprisingly for everyone, I was recovering faster than anyone expected. Living in the world of the intellect distracted me from realizing how serious my problems were, indeed, but right now, by strengthening my spirit my body was slowly recovering from the trauma as well.

While in hospital, I was able to keep a limited touch with my freelancing work, while being offered a full-time contract. I was waking up around 5.30 - a habit that I keep until now - and scheduling various activities - book blogging being by far one of the most important. April was by far the most productive reading time of the year and book blogging month so far, and it coincides with the most intense recovering period. 

By end of May, I was treated ambulatory and as the Corona lockdown was eased, I was fully back to life: my treatment continued but I was integrating my medical schedule into my daily busy working and parenting life. My travel was supposed to be kept on hold this year, I was fully aware of it, but at least I was convinced that I will survive until the next year and able to get back on the road again. 

Reading was filling those moments when I was longing for far away countries and places. This year, more than ever, I was discovering more and more authors outside the white Western world. I was getting lost in beautiful poetry, with more favorite poets added to my list of beloved authors, like, for instance, Forugh Farrokhzad. 

Another important achievement of this year was the increased number of movies I watched: especially through MUBI and Amazon Prime, I had access to films that kept me intellectually distracted with new images and feelings, and outstanding film directors. 

For a long time, I skeptically avoided audiobooks, because I was considering myself unable to connect to book other than through the written word. My hunger for knowledge was bigger than the prejudices: listening to books - I started with nonfiction and political books, easier to watch, but right now I am able to follow literature as well - I was smartly using some dead times while doing various administrative works or organising the house. I especially insisted to listen to German-speaking books because, I will never be happy enough with my German. Meanwhile, I started learning just another language, while finally getting some extra freelancing gigs in Spanish, Italian and Portuguese - and grateful about the time my mother - of blessed memory - spent insisting to learn those languages.

Month after month, book after book, my situation was improving until people that met me first in March had to check twice if the person they have in the front of them is the same me. My voice is back - another medical surprise for many - but I prefer to think twice before saying something. It´s a decent recognition that words do have such a lethal power in our lives that sometimes can instantly kill someone. 

My recovery process meant also that I had to leave many people behind. I know they are much better without me as I am happy to be out of their story. This is how I´ve learned to appreciate those people that I let enter my life for the rare character feature of being themselves. And here is my favorite love-quote of the year: ´Loving someone just because of who they are as a person is rare, rather than mainstram media has led us to believe. Often, we´re propelled to love people because they fit, if not perfectly, comfortably, into what we need at that point in our lives´ by the author of Pizza Girl, Jean Kyoung Frazier. 

I am grateful for reaching this point in my personal and professional life. All my beautiful failures I went through were just an encouragement to keep walking - and reading- in order to be ready for this beautiful moment. I am looking further to the next 12 months with no other plans than living and loving and reading. It´s enough for now.