A love reborn from the ashes.

4 - Peace after the storm

Sanem

Another day was coming to an end and I couldn't give up my little evening ritual, a moment all to myself that I tried to get every evening before dinner simply to stand there and stare at the sun disappearing behind the hills on the other side of the Bosphorus. This place had immediately given me a sense of peace that my life had lost for months after the fateful night when he had left me.

The days following his departure had been terrible, in which I had had to come to terms with a life that had fallen into a thousand pieces, I had had to accept the fact that his number, which I had called a million times in the first desperate moments, would never be answered.
I had let my days go by like that, one after the other, without anything that could fill them, it had been impossible to think rationally, to make sense of what had happened and to have hope for tomorrow.

The rejection for the world and for life had started right away with the resignation from Yigit's agency. I couldn't think of going back to that office, to that building, but most of all I couldn't think of going back to work with him, to have contact with Polen and, worse, to meet Huma. Everyone had had their part in separating us, they had hated our happiness and had tried to erase it and, in the end, had succeeded.

With hindsight I was able to look at Yigit's behavior with more realistic eyes and realized that Can was right, his attitude towards me was not sincere. There was some hidden purpose behind his actions, he had tried in every way to take me away from Can and with the help of Huma, who had challenged my pride by saying that I wouldn't be able to accomplish anything alone in life, he had finally succeeded.

The first moments were really hard, nothing and nobody could wake me up from a constant torpor that prevented me from eating, sleeping, thinking. My gaze perpetually lost in the void could not focus on the faces of loved ones who were trying to shake me, touch me, talk to me, try to bring me back to life. My mind was elsewhere, it was in a hammock under a sky quilted with stars by the sea, it was on the rocks in front of the Maden's  Tower, it was in the woods near a camp tent, it was in a noisy and colorful agency where our love was born and raised. I lived and relived in my mind every minute, every smile, every brush of hands, every single hug, it was just what kept me alive, the memories.

One day, all of a sudden, an earthquake had shaken my soul to the core and, after the first moments in which my world was completely turned upside down making me feel the despair of a dead-end situation, like a lightning bolt, the realization.
I could and should have made it!

The sweet erkenci kuş enthusiastic about life, confident in the future and open to everything and everyone was gone, in its place, from its ashes, a phoenix had to rise and rebuild its life at all costs. I couldn't agree with Huma, I had to find my own way, with what was left of my dreams, and start living again.

I began to write compulsively, even for days on end, with almost no sleep or food, I found in writing an outlet for my despair. Line after line, word after word, my torn soul began to be mended, the relief of being able to put down on paper all my love for him was gradually bringing me back to the present life and the thought of having a future.

After days and days of almost maniacal writing, I put an end to a novel that was nothing more than my soul laid bare, it was something that had come into the world and that had made me reborn. I immediately sent a copy to all the publishers I could find by doing extensive research online and I was incredibly surprised by the fact that not one,  but several companies contacted me.
It was time to come back to life, to rise from the ashes and look at the world that was waiting for me, outside my room with the albatross poster that had been keeping me company every day since my adulthood and was now just there to remind me what was no longer mine.
I had several interviews and discovered that not only did I have a chance to make my dreams come true, but I also had the luxury of choosing how and with whom to do it. Frenetic days followed in which I had to make many decisions, many of them extremely painful.

I was tormented by doubts when, one afternoon, I headed inquisitively towards the coast. Sitting on a bench I observed people getting on a boat and on impulse, I decided to take it and let it take me anywhere as long as it was far from my thoughts.

That sudden trip introduced me to a stretch of coastline, not far from the center of Istanbul, unknown to me until that moment and of which I could not help but fall hopelessly in love. I felt that in those places I could find the minimum of peace that life could still give me.

Here I am, several months later, with my book published in several countries around the world under the pseudonym Phoenix, with the economic independence I so badly needed and finally relatively at peace with myself and the world in this corner of paradise.

The sun was now gone, I began to feel on my skin the cool breeze that the sea brought from afar, I felt an unknown shiver shake me, I hugged myself to warm my bare arms and retraced my steps towards the small cottage that had become my refuge and my nest hidden from the world.