Kai• ros | Julian Brandt

15.

Winter break - slowly passing, long weeks that many times dragged on like sticky, chewed gum that someone spit on the sidewalk and that, thanks to your infinite luck, stuck to the sole of your favorite pair of sneakers.

I hated it!

Not only was it bitterly cold outside and the short days were alternating with long, cold evenings, and instead of one layer of clothing I had to wear at least five to maintain at least some body temperature and not freeze, but as a bonus to all this there was no football. Sorry, my mistake! On every sports channel, there were repeats that were repeated over and over again, which people knew almost by heart over the years.

Signal Iduna Park, as well as the Brackel training grounds, yawned into emptiness. A fine dusting of snow adorned the mostly perfectly manicured grassy areas, on which the players used ran, with the ball on their cleats.

I spent the few days at the turn of the new year with Diana and her furry pet cat Perseus at home in Dortmund. Just the two of us, isolated from the outside world and from the holidays we hated from the bottom of our hearts. A bottle of semi-sweet red wine was our faithful companion. Diana used it to drown her sorrow from a failed date, and I, on the other hand, was looking for something at the bottom of the wine glass that would dampen the chaos that was unleashed inside me. And so our vacation was characterized by the alternation of several phases - the phase of denying feelings, the phase of hating men and the phase of self-pity drowning in a drop of red.

This seasonal winter break was different. It wasn't just football that made my heart cry, it was also Julian that I missed. Yes, that arrogant blond football player grew a little more close to my heart than I wanted or could have admitted until then.

While I was tormented by the stiff Dortmund winter, Julian was caressed by the rays of the Californian sun.

He needed to get out, to leave the country where everyone knew him, as a professional player of a football club in the German Bundesliga, which unfortunately showed one fiasco after another in the last matches. He longed to have, at least for a moment, the opportunity to put a mask of anonymity on his face and blend in with the crowd. To detach not only from football and everything that was inherently related to it, but also from his daily routine. The States seemed like the perfect destination.

It was only a few days. A few tens of hours. Being without him should have been easy.

Until recently, I couldn't stand his proximity. I couldn't tolerate the idea of ​​the two of us in the same room. That is why I believed that managing these few days would not be a particularly big problem.

It wasn't from the beginning. On the contrary, I saw our separation as a kind of opportunity. A chance to dissolve the fluffy, sugary haze of love in which I was hopelessly trapped.

I believed that time spent apart would help me sober up. I believed that I would regain the perspective that I was losing at Julian's side. I believed that I would see things with real eyes again. Just the way they are. I believed that rationality would once again win over crazy female hormones. After all, I was an adult, so I couldn't act like a teenage version of myself. That version of Carlotta Watzke, who was driven crazy by more than one guy which also became the center of her universe with a snap of fingers.

Three. Two. One. We can laugh together at my naivety.

Being without him was not easy.

There was radio silence between us, fueled in part by the time difference that separated us.

No calls, no texts. Nothing.

Just silence, which made me feel anxious.

If it weren't for Jannis, who at regular intervals supplied his social networks with new and new photos, in which Julian sometimes flashed, I would hardly know about him. Yes, I really sunk so low that I went through Jannis's profile on an unnamed platform every day, trying to find any information about Julian. Do not judge me! Desperate situations call for desperate actions. Or whatever.