Glass of life

Sometimes we can feel when we make mistakes. In my case - I always know that what I’m about to do is a complete mistake, but I still do it. I have a strong intuition and I had it for as long as I existed but I never used it. It’s just silly to always have the answer but to never answer the right way. That’s why feeling wrong, after having the pure chance to be happy with no mistakes in life, left me with the bothering feeling of guilt. Nothing really helped getting rid of this feeling. OK, maybe wine does, but only temporarily.

Of course for us, as human beings, it’s normal to make mistakes, but we also have a long way to go in order to learn to admit it.

Here is my story.

I was 18 when I met Juan. He was 19 at the time. His parents and mine were business partners and they had a winery together.

They were successfully selling Merlot... But let me go back to Juan, because he is the special one here.

He was unpredictable and so incredible. He had that contiguous happiness living forever in his beautiful soul and always had something wise or funny to say without playing too smart and making you feel stupid. I don’t know how he was able to do that, but I loved it because there were plenty of times when I was in fact stupid and his presence was reassuring for me. He usually came to see me without any notice. We never had a real date. He was always climbing a tree close to my house and from there he was jumping onto my balcony. Somehow he always managed to bring me our favorite Merlot that we were making in the winery and came up with all these great plans for our future saying “Let’s have a glass of life!” every single time he showed up at my window. We also had our little joke that I ( I have to add something here dear reader, I just realized I didn’t present myself! My name is Brie - like the cheese.) so we had our joke that I - Brie go perfectly well with our great wine and he is the true unforgettable romantic, Don Juan who is nothing without red wine and me - in our little scenario of course.

One day, no one really knew how, but the winery burned down. Our families blamed each other and quickly separated. Juan didn’t care that our families were fighting, he didn’t give up on me and tried to keep things the same, but after all that, I decided to leave the country for good. I know it sounds silly but I felt I needed some time for myself. That time turned into years, then into decades...

I was often going back to my memories of Juan, but I never had the strength to look for him, and for some reason, I’ve never loved someone like I loved him. If only I had listened to my intuition...What was I thinking leaving the man that I loved? And I don’t know if it was somehow connected to Juan but not too long after I left my country, two existential questions didn’t want to leave my mind – where is my place in this big world and where is home?

My friend Merry knew all about my sadness and she was pushing me to look for him, but I thought there was no way that he was not already happily married with a few kids after all these years. Isn’t that the usual thing people do?!

It was February 14th again and I didn’t have a boyfriend. Merry said that she had everything planned out for this special day and all I had to do was to just show up. I was a little nervous and I wasn’t really sure why, but my intuition was saying that something big is going to happen. And I didn’t trust it again...

I put on a red short dress that was perfect for the event, and looked in the mirror. It was like the young Brie looked back. That was encouraging, I thought to myself. It felt like I went back in time.

When I arrived at the restaurant no one was there. I looked at the time, thinking that I arrived early, but I was on time.“Hm, something is up!” I noted as I saw flashing lights coming out of the ceiling, making the place very romantic. The whole space was filled with delicious smells of red-skinned grapes that reminded me so very much of my youth. There was only one table in the middle of the restaurant with a big candlestick with what seemed like hundreds of little lights sparkling in it. Not too far from the candle I was able to see our Merlot, just like the one that we used to make decades ago! But how did she know? I was confused. I thought that I was dreaming! This is too good to be true... and right there in that exact moment, a familiar voice broke the silence saying “It’s a real date!” I turned around and saw Juan - sharply dressed, and handsome looking as usual, he continued “Let’s have a glass of life!”. I looked at his deep warm eyes that were an absolute portal to the world and it was like they were saying “ Welcome back home!”!

So it turns out it’s all connected, dear reader, I’m now home!