16/03/2026
Who wants to be my next ex-husband?
Twelve years is the longest I’ve ever lasted. Twelve years for a relationship, twelve years for a company. It’s my internal shelf life, the time it takes for my curiosity to exhaust a landscape.
After that, everything starts to shrink, as if cities, houses, and chapters came with a built-in countdown.
I’m not sure if it’s a problem with endings or a devotion to beginnings.
Even when I got married, I wasn’t looking for “forever.” I was in love and I wanted to celebrate it. Marriage was just that: a party, a gesture, a way of saying this exists now and wanting to share it with the people I love.
But I struggle with standing still. Karen would say I’m a dopamine ju**ie.
People often ask me a question that always catches me off guard: “How long are you in Barcelona for?”
As if I’m always just passing through. As if staying were an anomaly rather than a choice.
I don’t see life as a straight line, a series of milestones to be checked off until a final destination justifies the journey. As long as I have my health, I feel I can start over as many times as I want. And that, apparently, makes people more uncomfortable than I expected.
In my early twenties, a numerologist told me she saw an obsession with freedom in my life, but also a certain fear. At the time, I thought she was a fraud. Years later, I’m not so sure.
There is a very specific anguish in not having a script. We crave freedom, but we are terrified of sustaining it. We seek it, we idealize it, and then, almost instinctively, we try to hand it over to someone or something that can relieve us of the weight of choosing.
It took me years to realize it wasn’t just a personality trait; it was the classic fear of freedom. Thanks, Erich Fromm, for ruining my excuse.
And yet, I choose it anyway. Every single day. And yes, it’s a heavy thing to carry.
(Continues in comments)
