𝑂𝑁𝐸

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𝑁𝑂𝑇𝐻𝐼𝑁𝐺 𝑊𝐸 𝐷𝐸𝑆𝐼𝑅𝐸𝐷

𝑁𝑂𝑇𝐻𝐼𝑁𝐺 𝑊𝐸 𝐷𝐸𝑆𝐼𝑅𝐸𝐷ᴛʜᴇ ʙᴇɢɪɴɴɪɴɢ

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𝑁𝑂𝑇𝐻𝐼𝑁𝐺 𝑊𝐸 𝐷𝐸𝑆𝐼𝑅𝐸𝐷
ᴛʜᴇ ʙᴇɢɪɴɴɪɴɢ

There are always people in your life, whether family or just a shop owner that's lived across the street, that would bring out random points of wisdom that never seemed to make sense. For me, it was always my family, written in our genetics that we must be mysterious in our words. My Aunt Mathilde was a woman of words that she often thought of great importance. I never once believed that anything would come of them.

I was born to Turkish parents but lived in Italy with a distant Aunt that I was almost sure had no living relation to me. We had a beautiful home in the countryside, always decorated with fresh flowers from the garden or the village florists. For the most part, life was easy.

On sunny mornings when the air was humid and sweating, we would sit outside, bathing in the golden light that would drift over from the hilltops that surrounded the villa. Midday was beautiful, with the glistening of the water in the garden pond and the buzzing of the bees by my Aunt's favourite flower patch, but it was the late hours that I loved. On fine evenings, Aunt Mathilde and I would sit by the fire on the patio, a bottle of wine opened on the table that separated us. I never wanted for anything. It was a never-ending cycle.

It was on one of these beautiful evenings, a colder one in June, that I remember something Aunt Mathilde had said. We were discussing my leaving, of the travelling I would do thanks to the money that my parents had left. At the time it had been nothing more than advice that I would forget after another glass of her favourite red wine, but I suppose it was far more valuable than I could have ever imagined.

"My darling, Dilara," she'd said, voice dripping with the dramatics that she'd pulled straight from her excess of books. "I'm sad to see you go, I truly am. But I am excited for you to learn to love the world. To see it just as the poets and the authors and the artists do, just as I know you will. And I want you to promise me two things."

At the time, she looked so inspired, as if envious of my position to be able to go to the far off places she could only dream about from between the pages of the books that kept her comfort against the conflicts of the world. Yet as I remember it, she was more wistful than anything, full of a certain kind of grief and sadness that I'd known too well. She must have been in remembrance of my own mother, of the dreams she'd escaped to and inevitably never come back from.

"I want you to promise to enjoy yourself and to never be afraid to live, my dear. You have a big heart hidden all the way underneath your sternness," she said, gaze pointed. "But I want you to promise not to lose yourself in the process. Always remember who you are."

I still remember the feeling of her hand placing itself over my chest, the beating of my heart suddenly becoming louder at her touch.

"A strong, opinionated young woman, with a mind of her own. A sharp tongue and an even sharper brain. Never let anything take that away. You promise me that!" Aunt Mathilde said.

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