Modern Love

Love & Other Emotional Crimes

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  • The “I Love You”

    Lately I’ve been digging. Digging deep, not in the romantic sense, but in the “why can’t I say I love you without sounding like I’m confessing to a crime?” kind of way. I realized that I can’t say it out loud. Not to my parents, not to my friends, not even to my plants. Apparently, I can whisper it to a city, but even then it’s in this weird, baby-talk tone like, “oh I wuv you.” Which is… not the same thing.

    I’ve tried practicing it in the mirror. “I love you.” Nope. My throat tightens. My face does this awkward twitch thing. It’s like my vocal cords are on strike.

    I started to wonder, how many times have I heard that phrase growing up? Not that my parents or grandparents didn’t love each other. They did. They just expressed it in ways that didn’t require actual words. Like, “Here, I cut you some fruit.” Or, “You’re getting pale, eat more iron.” Apparently, our family tree has a generational allergy to saying “I love you.” Maybe it’s cultural. Maybe it’s trauma. Or maybe we just prefer our love medium-rare, served through acts of service, not syllables.

    That tracks for me, though. Acts of service? My main love language. I show love by doing things. Cooking for someone. Listening to their existential crisis without checking my phone. Helping them pick an outfit that doesn’t scream midlife panic at 25. But sometimes that turns into overgiving, which I’m… still unlearning. Learning to say no without feeling like I’ve committed a felony. Learning to ask, “Can we meet at 6:30 instead of 7?” instead of martyring myself at a bar for half an hour writing blog drafts like this one.

    Words of affirmation, though? That’s where things get tricky. I see people throw “I love you” around like confetti. Girls saying it to someone they met ten minutes ago: “I love your energy.” And I’m like: wow, that’s a bold move. I admire it, but I also needed a nine-month period before my “I love you”s left the mouth to the person I loved with all the cells in my body. No offence girl, but I think I need to complete my 3 years of getting to know you period before I get to say “I love you.” 

    But maybe, just maybe, the real work isn’t about blurting it out. Maybe it’s about making peace with the feeling behind it. Letting love exist in whatever form it wants to, whether it’s a whispered “I love this city,” a packed lunch for someone you care about, or a silent I love you said internally because your voice still cracks when you try.

    Because love isn’t always loud. Sometimes it’s shy. Sometimes it’s clumsy. And sometimes it just needs a little practice before it comes out naturally, without the baby voice. And sometimes the people who don’t blurt it out, may be loving you the deepest, quietly. 

  • Dear Alex,

    It’s been a month since you passed. It still doesn’t feel real.

    I was in Bern when I found out you weren’t going to make it. You actually seemed better when I left you at home. I didn’t want to leave, but the time had come for me to go. I’d given you your antibiotic shot on your leg and made it bleed a little, I’m sorry for that. Even the magic of Bern couldn’t make me feel better. I was crying inside, quietly grieving you while wandering the streets, hoping to run into dogs that looked like you so I could give them pets as if they were you. I still haven’t gone back since. I’m not ready to relive the pain of losing you. But when I do, I’ll release a white rose into the river for you.

    You were one of the happiest dogs I’ve ever known. How you wouldn’t hear us when you were asleep, and how I’d have to go find you, shake you gently from your nap just to tell you it was beach time. You never complained. You just got up, wagged your tail, and trotted off toward the sea. I can still see how impatient you’d get when I fumbled for the key to unlock the beach gate, and how Hazelnut always sprinted ahead just to be first. You always let him. You were calm like that. How you stole vegetables from my grandparents’ garden, and how we blamed the foxes or the boars even though we knew it was you. How you loved playing with the zucchini, the pumpkins and the watermelons. 

    You loved swimming. Winter, summer, didn’t matter. You were my winter-swimming buddy when nobody else dared. Two cold-resistants with selective hearing, doing what we loved. How I loved running at the beach with you. You were like a brother I never had. 

    And you had that signature husky mumble when you got bored, that grumpy, adorable “talking back” voice that always made us laugh. Sometimes we’d talk back at you, and you’d look at us as if we were crazy. You greeted us when we got back like we were the best part of your world. And honestly, you were the best part of ours.

    The night you passed, I saw you in my dream. You were running around, happy again. I know you’re in a better place now. Still, I’m sorry if we couldn’t do everything we could to make you better. Hearing you in agony that night, the sound you made when you were getting attacked, it broke something in me. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever heard. Your last weeks weren’t easy, but thank you for holding on as long as you did. You were brave, gentle, and endlessly loving even when you were in pain. 

    Now you rest near the beach, your favorite place. You’re with our other beloved dogs now, the ones you never got to meet. I always wished you could meet them. I knew if you had, the three of you would have caused glorious chaos together. I like to think that somewhere out there, you’ve met them, running wild. You’d be struggling with the waves, whilst Happy would be swimming like she was born to, and Paci would be refusing to touch the water but watching (and judging) you two from the shore, and you would be chasing each other endlessly at the beach, going after scents and seagulls. 

    You left us too soon. We weren’t ready to let you go. I wish I could say you left naturally, due to old age. But destiny, it seems, had other plans.

    May you rest in peace, Alex.

    May you run free, steal as many vegetables from the garden as you want, go to the beach whenever you want, and be joyfully, unapologetically happy as the pure soul you’ve always been. We love you dearest, sweetest Alex. 

  • Laundry Day

    At some point this year, after months of unpacking emotional baggage, breaking generational patterns, and performing full-time spiritual shadow work without PTO, I just… stopped unpacking my actual baggage. Specifically, my suitcase. And my closet.

    I’d come back from trips and let my luggage sit there for a week, like an emotionally neglected roommate. Clothes piled up on top of it, a textile volcano of defiance. My neat freak Virgo self would’ve never allowed it before, but this year? I liked it. I was rebelling. This was my punk era: no rules, no folding. I even let dishes pile up in the sink for three days. It was exhilarating. My inner control freak had finally left the building. 

    But then came the guests. Spontaneous ones, of course, because the universe loves testing spiritual people when their place looks like a small-scale fabric explosion. I did what any rational person would do; shoved everything into the closet. Clothes, tote bags, a rogue pair of jeans that could probably stand on their own. They lived there, crumpled together in the dark, for three weeks.

    At first, it felt liberating. But then it started bugging me. Like a tiny voice whispering from behind the closet door: “This isn’t freedom, this is chaos.”

    So yesterday, I went full Virgo. We’re talking deep-clean-on-steroids Virgo. I cleaned out the fridge, reorganized my kitchen, threw out anything that didn’t spark joy (or was growing its own ecosystem), and finally faced The Closet. I color-coded, categorized, folded, and Marie Kondo’d the life out of that place. Three giant donation bags later, I was reborn.

    I reorganized my bathroom, too. Got one of those fancy little shower shelves that can actually hold all my products: shampoo, conditioner, existential crisis scrub, the works. Now my apartment smells like fresh laundry and essential oils. It feels lighter. I feel lighter. Mostly because I’m no longer living with a closet monster made of denim and emotional avoidance.

    Here’s the thing: for someone like me, who used to clean to control her emotions and alphabetize her life just to stay sane, letting the mess be for a while was actually medicine. It taught me to release. To live with a little chaos without falling apart.

    The last time I deep-cleaned like a Virgo on steroids was on New Year’s Eve; and back then, the motive was… very different. I washed every piece of clothing that had ever stepped foot in his apartment. I scrubbed my luggage like it was evidence from a crime scene, determined to remove any trace of his energy, dust, scent, or emotional residue. Then, in true dramatic fashion, I left that luggage 2000 kilometers away like a symbolic mic drop two months later. I saged every corner of my apartment to banish the ghosts of me crying in those same corners over something he did. I flipped the mattress, washed every pillow, and practically performed an exorcism on my sheets. Turns out, I really didn’t want my 2025 to start with any leftover “him” haunting my space, and we weren’t even officially over when I was doing all of this. 

    But now? Now I clean from a different place. Not to control. Not to cope. Just because it sparks joy. And because, let’s be real, fresh sheets are the closest thing to enlightenment.

  • The Dream, The Year and the Rebirth

    Last year in December, I had a dream. I was windsurfing, full speed, wind in my hair, alive. There was a guy windsurfing with me. I didn’t know who he was at the time, just that he felt familiar in that weird dream way. Some months later, I stumbled upon him on Instagram. And surprise, he was real. Not dream real – actual human real. We started talking. Great guy. Aligned values. Deep conversations. I didn’t even realize he was the guy from the dream because I was too busy trying to decode the rest of it.

    After the windsurfing scene, the dream took a turn. I gave birth to myself. In someone’s yard. In the dark. He wasn’t even home. I saw the baby (the new me) with her big sparkling eyes, looking at me like she already knew who she was. She wanted to be loved, to be held. Then he came home. I was trying to show him the baby, to show him this new me. He didn’t even turn his head. Just said, “We are already over, why should I care?” in his deep, annoyed voice and walked inside, closing the door.

    We weren’t over when I had that dream. But after it, I knew it was coming. I waited for the text. And it came.

    It’s been months since that dream. Two, maybe three lifetimes’ worth of emotional growth since I had it. I spent the first two months just enjoying myself; doing things that made me happy, not sulking in pain, focusing on me. Then came the real rebirth. It happened in the dark, unpacking baggage, facing shadows, meeting myself where I’d left her. And just like in the dream, it all happened “in his yard while he wasn’t home.”

    And like the version of me in that dream, I kept wanting to show him the new me. The healed me. The peaceful me. The “look, I’ve grown” me. But he wasn’t looking.

    I still remember that baby’s face like it was last night: peaceful, radiant, full of light. Born in the dark, in someone’s yard, unseen but completely whole.

    And that’s the thing about healing, isn’t it? We want the people we love to see it. To witness our transformation. To validate the pain that made us who we are now. But often, by the time we’re reborn, they’re gone.

    The yard (as much symbolism as it held) showed me something profound. That connection gave me the space I needed to break down and rebuild. It wasn’t meant to last forever. It was meant to awaken something in me.

    And maybe that’s what I needed to finally see, that the love I was trying so hard to show, to prove, to share, was meant for me all along.

    Because the truth is, the love we crave… it’s been inside us the whole time.

  • When Your Cup Isn’t Full…

    Yesterday, a switch in my brain flipped when I found out about yet another change in a city I don’t even live in, but somehow remain emotionally attached to. I recognized the pattern from the last two months: blow after blow, change after change. I realized I wasn’t reacting to the removal of the golden elephant statue from that rooftop. I was reacting to everything else that’s been shifting underneath me.

    See, the thing is, we do this in our relationships too. We blow up at a late reply, but deep down, it’s not about the message. It’s about the dozen tiny moments we didn’t express: the disappointments, the unmet needs, the small hurts we let pile up like emotional laundry. Until one day, someone forgets to text back, and suddenly we’re folding every unresolved feeling into that one moment.

    Our cup gets empty sometimes. And most of us don’t even notice it happening. We’re too busy. Too distracted. Too busy being strong. Someone’s taking sips from it, life, work, people and we’re not pouring back in. Until one day, the cup runs dry. And with it goes our patience, our peace, and our ability to handle other humans existing.

    The trick is catching it before it hits zero. To notice when the water’s running low and pour back in while there’s still some left.

    So how do we pour back in? By doing the things that make us feel alive again. Joy. Peace. Rest. Laughter. By taking care of ourselves without guilt. By prioritizing our peace of mind, whatever that looks like. For some, it’s painting or walking barefoot in the grass. For others, it’s saying “no” more often.

    And sometimes, it takes a while to figure out what actually fills your cup. That’s okay. It’s part of the process. No one hands you a manual for this stuff, you learn it by noticing what drains you and what doesn’t.

    We can’t expect anyone else to keep our cup full. It’s our job. Our responsibility. Our act of self-respect.

    And maybe, just maybe, when our cup is full, we stop mistaking exhaustion for unhappiness, and start realizing that peace doesn’t come from life slowing down: it comes from us remembering to refill before we run dry.

  • Love, God, and the Divine Wi-Fi Connection

    At some point in your journey, you stumble upon this truth: Love is the greatest force in the universe. The kind that can heal, destroy, rebuild, and still leave room for dessert. Love is God, and God is Love. Simple, but somehow it takes a few heartbreaks, more than few dark nights of the soul, a couple of injuries, downloads, dreams and visions to really get it.

    Then one random night, just when you’re about to fall asleep, you get the download: God is the Divine Masculine. The Universe is the Divine Feminine. The birthing point. The yin and yang. The Sun and the Moon. The cosmic parents who created everything, including the mess.

    And as the energies within you start balancing out, you notice something. The inner masculine and the inner feminine stop arguing over who’s driving. They both just… meet in the heart center. No one’s dominating. No one’s performing. It’s peace talks in the chest cavity.

    The feminine, of course, rules the upper floors: intuition, dreams, visions. She’s the one whispering, “Go left, babe,” when your brain says, “That makes zero sense.” She’s the reason you trust the weird synchronicities and call them guidance instead of coincidence, much like when you ask the Universe for guidance. It delivers the signs. The tests. The orchestrated events in Divine Timing.

    The masculine, on the other hand, handles the downstairs department: structure, action, and material reality. You ask God for help, and He doesn’t send a sign. He sends an opportunity. A door. A call to move your butt.

    And when they finally merge: the Divine Wi-Fi connection between Heaven and Earth comes online. You start living from your heart, where love meets direction. That’s what they call Christ Consciousness. Unconditional love with a Google Calendar.

    The secret to balancing it all, I’ve learned, isn’t in floating away to the fifth dimension or living in monk mode. It’s living from the heart. Where the chakras play nice. Where nobody’s trying to be the boss.

    Because once you balance those inner energies, you stop fighting life. You start harmonizing with it. Like jazz, a little unpredictable, but somehow perfect.

    For most of my life, I was either team Universe or team God. I grew up believing in both, then switched to the dogmatic side, then went full “Universe, show me a sign!” mode. Turns out, both were right, they were just tired of the silent treatment.

    We live in a dual world. Matter and energy. Masculine and feminine. Light and shadow. Why would God and the Universe be any different? Maybe they’re not two separate forces after all. Maybe they’ve always been the original divine duo: the cosmic balance that existed long before us and will exist long after.

    And maybe, just maybe, balance has been the point all along.

  • Life After Finding Out You’re Not, In Fact, Indestructible

    There comes a point in life where you stop watching videos of people surfing, climbing, or doing parkour and thinking, “Wow, I’d love to try that.” Instead, you start thinking, “That’s a lot of pressure on the knees.”

    It’s a subtle shift, really. One day you’re inspired, the next you’re calculating MCL impact. That’s when you know, the delusion of bodily immortality has officially expired.

    I used to love walking. Walking was my therapy, my meditation, my end-of-day cleanse. I’d walk an hour home from work just to clear my head. I’d hike on weekends, preferably uphill, because I thought flat surfaces were “too boring.” Now apparently, a flight of stairs feels like a triathlon. My hips protest like unpaid interns, and my knee sends sharp electric reminders that I am, in fact, not 19 anymore. I blame Milano’s metro system for its eternal elevator outages. Truly humbling.

    These days, I find myself noticing how most public transportation isn’t exactly designed with people who have mobility issues in mind. And that realization came with a generous serving of karma. I used to be one of those people who didn’t understand why someone young would need a seat. Now, I’m that person: silently praying for an empty one and getting side-eyed by elderly women with grocery bags. I don’t blame them. I don’t look like I need a seat. But I do. And it made me realize how much we never really know what’s going on with someone. Empathy is the ultimate plot twist, apparently.

    Having three mobility injuries within one year wasn’t exactly in my 2025 bingo. I was supposed to be in Portugal by now, at surf camp, finally learning how to wave surf. I even bought a balance board to practice. I had dreams. I still have those dreams, they’re just currently benched. And instead I’m trying to find comfortable sleeping positions where neither my knee, hips nor my lower back ache at night.

    This year taught me what my 20s never could: that your body is not a YOLO vessel. It’s a living archive of every time you said, “It’ll be fine.” And eventually, it comes to collect.

    So yes, this year has been humbling. My ego is in early retirement, my knee is on strike, and my hips have unionized. But maybe that’s the point. Maybe “slowing down” isn’t punishment: it’s the universe forcing me to sit down long enough to finally… focus on my creativity. 

    And if that means I won’t surf a wave soon but will master the art of sitting gracefully without feeling guilty on the metro, so be it.

  • Out with the Old

    Life has a sense of humor this year, dark humor, specifically. 2025 rolled in as a “9” year, and anyone who’s ever dipped a toe into numerology has been dramatically whispering, “It’s all about karmic clearance and endings.” Endings of what, exactly? Apparently, of my physical stability and ability to exist without wincing.

    It started innocently enough. Hip bursitis on the right side. Like an ex who doesn’t understand “it’s over,” that one just kept popping back up with new drama. Then my left hip decided to join the party because, you know, equal opportunity suffering. While I was busy nursing my hips, my lower back decided to herniate itself right into the mix. A real overachiever. But I wasn’t too concerned; I could still walk, hike, and skateboard, so it’s fine, everything’s fine.

    By September, my hips finally got their act together, and I thought, “Okay, back to normal.” So I picked up my old hobbies; hiking and swimming in cold water like some feral ice age cavewoman, and that’s when my left knee said, “Surprise, bitch.” Ligament strain. Round two. This knee already had its big main-character moment eleven years ago, but apparently, it missed the spotlight.

    At this point, I started to wonder if all these injuries were part of some cosmic upgrade. Maybe life’s way of forcing my ego into an early retirement. Every time I try to do something I want, the universe just smirks and says, “Nope, sit down. Inner work time.”

    Or maybe this is punishment for ignoring those “gentle nudges” I’ve been getting for two years. You know, the ones that start soft and spiritual: “Rest, slow down, nurture yourself” and now sound more like, “Stop resisting or we’ll take the other knee.”

    There’s also the possibility that my body just… caught up with me. After years of pushing it, maybe it’s finally staging a full-blown mutiny, demanding a self-care era instead of my usual “healing-through-suffering-in-cold-water” routine.

    I’ve always loved the cold: the sharp air, the icy lakes, the frostbite flirting with my skin. It’s harsh, yes, but there’s something satisfying about it. It’s like nature’s version of tough love. Except now I’m realizing… maybe I keep choosing the cold because it mirrors the emotionally unavailable people I used to chase. My soul is warm and nurturing, but I keep signing up for environments that make me fight for warmth. Maybe that’s been my version of “balance.”

    But one thing’s for sure: I’m not who I used to be. The girl who thrived on intensity and discomfort has packed up and left the building. And though I still try to hang onto her like she’s vintage, she’s not coming back.

    So here I am, knee-braced, humbled, and rebranding. Maybe it’s time for new hobbies, ones that don’t involve chronic pain or frostbite. A rebuild phase, softer this time, more aligned with who I’m becoming.

    Because apparently, “Out with the old” applies to bodies too.

  • The Trinity Version

    I faced it today. What I’d been running from. Full-on freak-out. The kind that hits you in the gut and makes your whole life flash in front of you like a trailer for a movie you didn’t audition for. The moment it sank in: my life is never going to be the same again.

    Sure, it wasn’t perfect before. I was blissfully unaware for most of my teenage years and early twenties. But at least I thought I was in control. I had a plan. A neat little Pinterest board version of my future. A normal job. A terrace apartment drenched in sunlight. Too many plants. Maybe a family one day; a dog, and preferably, a son.

    I wanted the “Tiffany” life. If you’ve seen The Matrix Resurrections, you know what I mean. Safe. Suburban. Simple. But apparently, I got the Trinity version. Only difference is, I’m more like Neo when he first woke up: the panic, the nausea, the disbelief. The “what the heck is this place?” part.

    I see people online romanticizing this journey, saying they want it, manifesting awakenings and DNA activations like they’re ordering off a spiritual menu. I look at them like they’ve lost it. No one in their right mind signs up for this. I didn’t. Not consciously, anyway. It happened on a random night in March. No yoga retreat. No full moon ceremony. No ayahuasca trip.

    However I had been looking for answers my whole life. I had certain questions like splinters in my mind. And apparently the answers found me. And I had no idea what was going on for some time. 

    And the wild part? The Matrix movies finally made sense. I’ve been trying to decode them since I was nine. Turns out, I was just too early. Because at twenty-six, on the cusp of twenty-seven, I started living them.

    And like the real world in the movies, the one with gray skies, bad food, torn clothes, this journey isn’t a candlelit dinner with a juicy steak and red wine. It’s cold. Raw. Humbling. And I get Cypher now. I really do. There are days I’d give anything to go back to sleep. But I wouldn’t trade Morpheus. Not for all the steak in the simulation.

    The truth is, I’ve realized what my purpose is. And it looks nothing like what I imagined, nor what I wanted. Everything I used to obsess over, texts, plans, the future, just fell apart. Lost their power over me. I feel like I’ve stepped out of the world where unanswered messages meant heartbreak, and into one where silence just means peace.

    I think, for the first time, I can let my old self go in peace. That’s how I made peace with him and the past finally. When I let her go, when I resolved my issues with her, my old self. Not him. And when I did; the next step was revealed. I still think I could have postponed it a little more. She did her best with what she knew. But I’m not her anymore. And that’s okay.

    And maybe it’s time I rewatch those movies again. 

  • On Healing and Dishwashers

    Last night, unprocessed past made an appearance in my dreams: my beloved late bunny, our wounded dog after his attack, and a friend I had a falling out with months ago.

    The thing is, you think you’ve healed. You think you’ve graduated from that phase, earned your invisible diploma in “moving on.” And then, surprise: the universe slides another assignment across your desk. Apparently there’s always extra credit in emotional processing.

    It’s like when you finally manage to load the dishwasher after a ten-person dinner, feeling victorious -a domestic goddess in her prime- and just as you’re about to press start, someone walks in with ten more plates. You stare, defeated. You sigh. Then you start unloading and rearranging, somehow making it all fit, because that’s what adults do: we make space for the unexpected mess.

    Healing’s exactly like that. Just because you’ve “done the work” once doesn’t mean you’re exempt from doing it again. Emotions pile up. Life keeps serving courses you didn’t order. The dishwasher -your heart- never really gets to retire.

    And yes, sometimes it’s exhausting. Sometimes you just want to take a vacation from yourself, go to a metaphorical restaurant, and let someone else do the dishes for once.

    But maybe that’s the beauty of it, that we can keep unloading, reloading, and rinsing what no longer serves us. Maybe healing isn’t a one-time deep clean. It’s just the ongoing maintenance of being human.