July 5 2026: Inconsequential writing… the striped sweater

Last few months I have been so busy… letting so many things go. Just endings. Like an endless onion I feel. Letting go of all the layers.

Letting relationships end.

People come and go. Just to let them come and go again, and again, and again and again….

Letting identities end.

Letting expectations end.

Letting old versions of myself end.

So much letting go…that I almost forgot there is another movement happening at the same time.

Recognition.

…

And just this weekend, as I was wandering aimlessly … while my heart was still hanged on my recent letting go… my subconscious was also busy… pointing at my self. In my usual way, it seems.

I have had this way, since childhood, of looking at things, people and places and just knowing: Aha!!! This is me!!

There is this deep inside thing that says: “This feels like me.” I don’t choose things because they are in fashion, popular or useful. I choose them because they feel like home. Maybe that’s how I have always known my way.

It could be shoes.

A pair of pants.

A huge rock half my size.

A root. A stick. A plant.

A random object.

A person.

A plane to the unknown.

A spam email;)

And right there, without hesitation, I just grab it. (Sometimes I have to pay for it. Or in my child case, I have to convince my mother with puppy eyes, but she knew this thing about me 😊. She knew the “this is me” thing about me)

That was exactly what happened this weekend. I wandered into a store without anything in mind… and found myself in a striped sweater. Just like that, it felt like me. I didn’t even have to try it on. I just knew.

It reminded me of the time I became known as “the girl of the pink pants”

They were not black leggings or jeans nobody notices if you wear them every day. But bright, pink, legging like pants.

I saw them in the way I see things (you can anlready imagine the stars in my eyes 🤩, looking at my mom), and I knew. My mom had no other choice but to buy them. Later I bought two identical blouses because, they were also me. And well…. Blouses need more rotation? And also what if they break? I need backup. Pant was more expensive, so I couldn't get two 😅

For the next one to two years, maybe three, in high school and outside of it, I wore almost nothing else. Every single day! I only exchange between school uniform and my civilian uniform (the pink pants and the same on repeat black blouses)

People whispered as I walked through the school “Look, the same pants”. Sometimes they just shouted at me from the dorms while I walked through the corridors.

But I didn’t care. At all! Because they were the most me I could be. Until one day…

A car accident. About 140 km/h. A curve. Loss of control or some problem with a car piece...I was asleep in the passenger seat of an old Moskvitch without a seatbelt. I woke up to the twisting, turning and rolling until the car finally stopped upside down.

Nothing happened to me. The pants weren’t so lucky. A small hole. I think it was small. My mom took the opportunity to throw them away without me noticing. I never would have. Or at least not yet.

Looking back, I realize that wasn’t only about the pants. I guess by contrast this shows how I did not let go. It was how I lived. I carried pieces of myself everywhere I went. University hundreds of kilometers away with my random collection of “things”.

Continents away. I carried all those things that were me.

Roots.

Branches.

Sea rocks.

River rocks.

Leaves.

Flowers.

Little box.

Little random objects, like a funny, happy looking giraffe, made of rubber and wires inside.

A Pink Panther that travelled all the way to Poland, to Canada and back to Cuba.

My rocks travelled to Poland too. They took precedence over clothes.

Throughout my life there have been things I’ve held onto because they felt like little pieces of me. Looking back, I realize I was never attached to the object itself. I was attached to the feeling of recognizing myself through it. Or in some cases, what it reminded me of.

Sometimes other people decided when those things should end.

Sometimes life decided.

Sometimes I did.

So I guess this weekend, as I molted again into unfamiliar territory…new actions, new decisions, new perspectives… new ways of being… I simply walked by, and found something that was me.

A few weeks ago I kept saying:

“Everything feels boring.”

“Nothing inspires me.”

“I walked around interrogating trees.”

Today… I found myself in a sweater.

Then my mind goes to my dreams.. How they keep circling around crows… And energy whales… And trains with blocked windows… and injured rats, or squirrels…. Situations , and dreams seems random… but when I look close enough, scattered there are constants.

Maybe they aren’t random at all. They all seem to point in the same direction.

Back. Not backwards. Back to myself: “There you are.”

I wonder if that’s what has been happening more and more over the past years.

Less: “Who should I become?”

More: “Oh… there I am again.”

Not constructing an identity. But recovering one.

I just had this realization the other day… and started crying as I recollected all my dreams examining them… like my rock collection, and it finally started to reveal a painting, a story..

.. of a little girl, lost to her imagination. Walking and doing, playing, creating, expressing, existing. Free.

Then slowly protection, defending, armor, then a sword, the walls and fences...

Then fights… and wounds… lost… forgetting why and what and when…

Then resting.. recovering… surrendering… because no more fight. No more armour, and swords..

Then space…Movement, dancing, gardening… crafting… soft dresses.. ideas… little excitements here and there...

This sweater belongs in that painting. Not because it’s an important sweater.

Because it’s another breadcrumb… towards that girl with the pink pants.

Towards the girl that loses the sense of time.. and enters in the space of her own flow and existence.

It was a reunion. Between the found and lost. Between the lost and found.

I’ve realized I don’t just look at the world. I interrogate it.

Trees.

Rocks.

Branches.

Plants.

Sweaters.

People.

Forgotten objects.

I’m always asking,

“Who are you?”

“What could you become?” , “What’s your story?”

“What are you trying to tell me?”

But lately I’ve started wondering if I’ve been asking the wrong question.

Maybe what I’ve really been asking all these years is… “Where am I?”

Maybe that’s why, even while feeling lost… while fighting battles, letting go, walking what feels like circles… I keep stumbling into these tiny moments.

“Oh… there I am.

I keep repeating the same little actions I’ve always repeated.

Curiosity.

Rescuing animals.

Collecting rocks.

Talking to trees.

Finding pieces of myself in strange little objects.

Maybe not everything needs a destination. Some things simply ask to be expressed before they disappear again.

Maybe that’s what this was. A small breadcrumb. Another tiny mirror to remind me. Left by today’s version of me…for the one who will read it years from now.