readings

Everything I Know About Love

by Dolly Alderton

- eu achei que ia aprender "tudo" sobre o amor, achei que ia ser um manual aonde salvaria a minha vida e dominaria do assunto, lol. Não foi bem assim. - é um livro aonde conta a love life da protagonista desde a adolescência até a sua adulthood. Ele conta os perrengues e casual relationships que teve durante os seus 20s, 30s etc e sobre a love life de suas melhores amigas também. - eu aprendi algumas coisas: a. female friendships are very important e isso é bem retratado no livro. Uma vez em um relacionamento, é muito importante não se isolar do mundo e colocar effort em manter contato com as suas amizades, especialmente femininas - essas mulheres sempre estiveram ao seu lado, antes de qualquer outro parceiro, honor them. Nunca se sabe o dia de amanhã e, muitas vezes, não dá certo o seu relacionamento e você perdeu todo apoio emocional que tinha porque não cultivou a amizade quando podia. Não falo apenas de suas amizades femininas, mas todas as pessoas que sempre estiveram presentes na sua vida e que te apoiaram. Reconheça as pessoas, é importante. - foi engraçado saber como era a experiência de quem usava MSN Messenger, especialmente na adolescência. Não tinha contexto por não ser da minha época. O que acho interessante é que há desejos, intenções, pensamentos etc que não mudam de geração para geração, mas sim a forma e a ferramenta usada. Eg: meus pais se comunicavam por cartas, meus primos mais velhos por MSN e eu, aos 20 anos, redes sociais e até dating apps. (mas o ponto não é por serem gerações diferentes, mas sim pelos canais de comunicações disponíveis na época). - dentre as maiores riquezas da vida, ao meu ver, é experienciar o amor, e ter ele presente no seu cotidiano é viver da melhor forma possível. Ter uma casa cheia de amor, construir uma família unida, ter uma boa relação com as pessoas com que convive no dia a dia, como vizinho, time de trabalho, colegas de sala etc é muito rico - esse sentimento que o nosso corpo release após um simples "bom dia, nome_do_indivíduo" olhando olho no olho é o que preenche o meu coração e faz valer a pena "enjoy the ride" e estar presente e não focar tanto no resultado. Isso faz cada dia valer a pena a ser vivido. Espero que todo ser humano possa experienciar essa dádiva do amor, segue uma quote no livro citada que gostei bastante: "no matter how old or young we are, no matter how little or how much we've loved or lost, all of us deserve an occasional pair of arms around our waist as we stir the soup on the hob. It should never feel unavailable to us. 'Inside we are all seventeen with red lips,' I once read Laurence Olivier said. I agree with him with all my heart." - outra quote que gostei muito e concordo: "try as hard as you can not to judge other people's relationships and the way they conduct them. Long-term romantic love is a feat. People should do it in the exact way that works for them, even if it doesn't make sense to people on the outside" especialmente com o advento da internet, sinto que fazer fofoca e falar da vida alheia nunca ficou tão fácil. Parece que as pessoas hoje se comportam como júri da vida de pessoas que nem conhecem e formam opinões bem formadas sobre a vida pessoal de pessoas que mal têm contato. É muito "gostoso" se sentir dono da verdade, ter o poder da razão, saber o que teria feito no lugar da pessoa porque acha um absurdo fulano aceitar isso etc. A questão é, sempre quando me encontro nesse loop e nessa posição de "little miss knows it all", dou um passo para trás e reflito: não vou opinar porque: 1. deve ter muita coisa que não sei 2. não é o meu lugar de fala 3. não tenho a menor ideia do que teria feito se estivesse no lugar da pessoa, seja qual atitude que for o amor pode se manifestar loudly ou quietly, e gostei da maneira aonde a autora descreve: "And I also know that love is a pretty quiet thing. It’s lying on the sofa together drinking coffee, talking about where you’re going to go that morning to drink more coffee. It’s folding down pages of books you think they’d find interesting. It’s hanging up their laundry when they leave the house having moronically forgotten to take it out of the washing machine. It’s saying, ‘You’re safer here than in a car, you’re more likely to die in one of your Fitness First Body Pump classes than in the next hour,’ as they hyperventilate on an easyJet flight to Dublin. It’s the texts: ‘Hope today goes well’, ‘How did today go?’, ‘Thinking of you today’ and ‘Picked up loo roll’. I know that love happens under the splendour of moon and stars and fireworks and sunsets but it also happens when you’re lying on blow-up air beds in a childhood bedroom, sitting in A&E or in the queue for a passport or in a traffic jam. Love is a quiet, reassuring, relaxing, pottering, pedantic, harmonious hum of a thing; something you can easily forget is there, even though its palms are outstretched beneath you in case you fall." "I know that love can be loud and jubilant. It can be dancing in the swampy mud and the pouring rain at a festival and shouting ‘YOU ARE FUCKING AMAZING’ over the band. It’s introducing them to your colleagues at a work event and basking in pride as they make people laugh and make you look lovable just by dint of being loved by them. It’s laughing until you wheeze. It’s waking up in a country neither of you have been in before. It’s skinny-dipping at dawn. It’s walking along the street together on a Saturday night and feeling an entire city is just yours. It’s a big, beautiful, ebullient foof nature." "A week into my big New York adventure, I realized that places are kingdoms of memories and relationships; that the landscape is only ever a reflection of how you feel inside." Náo tem para onde fugir quando voce esta insatisfeito com si mesmo. Hop on place to place e tratar a superficie do problema, quando deep down, se sabemos que nao se trata disso. Eh algo tratavel olhando para dentro. “​​‘And did you gossip?’ ‘A bit, yeah,’ I said. ‘I didn’t realize how much I used to do it.’ ‘Why did you do it?’ ‘I don’t know. To feel close to people? To make conversation? Maybe to feel powerful,’ I said. ‘That’s the only reason people gossip. I obviously did it to feel powerful.’ ‘Yes, you did,’ she said with the slight smile she reserved for when she was pleased I had got there before she did. ‘It’s putting other people down so you could feel big.’” A autora tinha o habito muito forte de fofocar. Por mais que somos seres humanos e acho que nossos pequenos demons gostam de jogar papo fora e tiramos certa satisfacao em falar da vida alheia do proximo, principalemtnef falar dos outtos com intencoes negativas, nao eh um habito que gfosto de ter na minha vida e tendo me policiar bastante, começando pela minha ligua e por me inserir em lugares aonde tem o core do papo nao eh assim. Acjho que fofoca vem de um caminho de uma insegurança profunda que eh bacana ser tratado em terapia e construir a sua confianca by focando na sua vida, criando resiliência, construindo coisas que cvoce eh proud of and focusing on yrousdefl. Voce vai estar tao imerso e focado na sua vida e nos seus surrounfinfs, que vai esquercer a vida alheia de outros que nao te interessam. “‘If you feel like you can show all of yourself to someone without fear of being judged,’ he said, ‘your intimacy will go through the roof.’” “​​More often than not, the love someone gives you will be a reflection of the love you give yourself. If you can’t treat yourself with kindness, care and patience, chances are someone else won’t either.” as pessoas vao te testando as suas boundries ate voce se posicionar, se voce nao colocar limite nunca vai ter respeito. O amor que voce aceita eh um reflexo do amor que voce acha que merece. “the most important thing in a relationship is how well you work as a team. It’s a hackneyed notion for a reason: a couple need to be really, really good friends.” Alguem me falou que a esclha do seu parceiro eh a escolha de pessoa que voce mais consegue conversar O que eu achei muito muito lindo eh a forma de como o amor mais puro se manifestou na vida da protagonista. Por mais que ela nunca conseguiu ter uma relacao amorosa com um parceiro masculino com tanta proeza, o amor em suas amizades femininas era repleto de irmandade, lealdade, curiosidade genuina, respeito, confianca e consideracao. Segue my fav quotes que retratam isso: “Nearly everything I know about love, I’ve learnt in my long-term friendships with women. Particularly the ones I have lived with at one point or another. I know what it is to know every tiny detail about a person and revel in that knowledge as if it were an academic subject. When it comes to the girls I’ve built homes with, I’m like the woman who can predict what her husband will order at every restaurant. I know that India doesn’t drink tea, AJ’s favourite sandwich is cheese and celery, pastry gives Belle heartburn and Farly likes her toast cold so the butter spreads but doesn’t melt. AJ needs eight hours sleep to function, Farly seven, Belle around six and India can power through the day on a Thatcherite four or five.” “ I know what it is to enthusiastically strap on an oxygen tank and dive deep into a person’s eccentricities and fallibilities and enjoy every fascinating moment of discovery. Like the fact that Farly has always slept in a skirt for as long as I’ve known her. Why does she do that? What’s the point of it? Or that Belle rips her flesh-coloured tights off on a Friday night when she gets home from the office – is it a mark of her quiet rage against the corporate system or just a ritual she’s grown fond of? AJ wraps a scarf round her head when she’s tired – it’s certainly not cultural appropriation so what is it? Was she overly swaddled as an infant and it brings her a peaceful sense of infantilization? India has a comfort blanket, a frayed old navy jumper she calls Nigh Nigh that she likes to sleep with. Why does she call it ‘he’? And how old was she when she decided it was a boy? In fact, I would love nothing more than to conduct a sort of literary salon in which all my beloved friends bring their comfort blankets from childhood to the table and we discuss the gender identities of all of them. I would, believe it or not, find that completely compelling.” “​​I know what it is to collaboratively set up and run a home. I know what a shared economy of trust is; to know there will always be someone who will lend you £50 until pay day and that as soon as you’ve paid it back they might need to borrow the same off you (‘We’re like primary school kids constantly swapping sandwiches,’ Belle once said of our salaries. ‘One week you need my tuna and sweetcorn, the next I want your egg and cress’). I know the thrill of post in December and cards shooting through the letter box with three names written on the front that really make you feel like a family. I know the strange sense of security to be felt in seeing three surnames on one account when you log into online banking. I know how it feels for identity to be bigger than just you; to be part of an ‘us’. I know what it’s like to overhear Farly saying, ‘We don’t really eat red meat,’ to someone across the table or to hear Lauren say, ‘That’s our favourite Van Morrison album,’ to a boy she’s chatting up at a party. I know how surprisingly good that feels.” “I know what it is to love someone and accept that you can’t change certain things about them; Lauren is a grammatical pedant, Belle is messy, Sabrina’s texts are incessant, AJ will never reply to me, Farly will always be moody when tired or hungry. And I know how liberating it feels to be loved and accepted with all my flaws in return (I’m always late, my phone’s never charged, I’m oversensitive, I obsess over things, I let the bin overflow). I know what it is to hear someone you love tell a story you’ve heard approximately five thousand times to an enraptured audience. I know what it’s like for that person (Lauren) to embellish it more flamboyantly each time like an anecdotal Fabergé egg (‘it happened at eleven’ becomes ‘so this was around four a.m.’; ‘I was sitting on a plastic chair’ becomes ‘and I’m on this sort of chaise longue hand-crafted from glass’). I know what it’s like to love someone so much that this doesn’t really annoy you at all; to let them sing this well-rehearsed tune and maybe even come in with the supportive high-hat to boost the story’s pace when they need it.”