Luftbahn

I have been thinking about love and what it takes to be loved. I imagine everyone has the desire and craving to be loved. But sometimes I believe this has become a luxury or a useless feature of everyday life, we have everything we need in our routine, we are packed with activities, things to do, and more importantly, we are already fully committed to who our entitlements, with who we believe we should be or have. 

Love does not flourish where the ego is the ultimate boss. Some forms of passions and transactional relationships might exist, but love isn’t the word. Love requires abnegation, time and a selfless concentration on the other person’s perspectives. And trust. Through love we believe in humankind and on its ever capability to accept love. 

Loving is taking someone’s else point of view without judging. It is loving the person by who they are, not who we expect them to be. It is very easy to create an image of what love should look like, but reality might strike us with harsh facts: it isn’t that easy. 

For all, because we are all sick in some way. I don’t know if we are born this way or if we are infected with the delusions of the world as we grow up. We are all experiencing some kind of twisted love, when aggravated, people can become narcissists or even sociopaths. 

And here I will tell you the story of Alba, a woman surprisingly full of love, but uncapable of loving. 

Alba knew she had a terrible past, a past that is worse than that of ninety-nine per cent of the population. She was embarrassed to expose her past life; she was afraid that someone might find it out. But now in a sort of a new life, she had changed completely and entirely. She changed address, friends, habits, and, if she could, she would have changed her name too.

“Alba, I know through which roads you have travelled. I don’t really care about it… but you know… it’s just that I get curious… how could someone like you change so much?” 

When a colleague asked this, she freezed. How and why would she need to go over her past, if only she could erase it. 

Before you get curious, I will try to briefly explain Alba’s unadventurous past. 

It was seven years ago when everything happened. But when everything, in fact, really began, was over thirty years ago. Alba had a difficult upbringing. Neglected by her parents, she was raised by her grandparents, and they understood little of how to provide for a child. She had a starving soul, grew up without emotional nutrition and was probably dumped in a corner somewhere. She tried to feel a person through painting, it was probably the only moment when she could tear her soul out, her only way of self-expression. She was shy. Spoke too quietly – therefore had probably nothing good to say. Walked with a bit of a hunch – it might be because only the courageous ought to look forward. She had lack of appetite – but only the winners would like to stay in the game.

And years passed by, when she was a teenager, she met a handsome boy, with whom she fell in love. Knowing that Alba is the villain of the story, you might imagine how this romance was. Or wasn’t. He seduced her only to play with her, because having a hunchbacked, skinny, shy girl at his feet seemed interesting to him. At least for one of the parts, it was. For Alba, a scar she would never get rid of, it hurt her profoundly in her little capacity of loving. And after that, she never dared to love again.

As it is inevitable for any adult, Alba had to find a job. She never went to college or university. She learnt some things with life. She always liked computers, at her grandmother’s house, still young, she got familiar with technology using an old computer available there. She was good at it. But no one noticed and she remained mediocre. Everything she knew, she learnt alone, but none of it was enough for her to stand out in the slightest. She found a more or less good job in a small office in the city, no great opportunities and mildly stressful. All she had to do was to keep clients’ files updated, nothing more, nothing less. 

But Alba always felt threated. She felt she was too little, much less than what she should or would like to be. Since childhood, it seems that the world expected something from her, and she could never deliver it. And she had a terrible fear of losing her job. It was the only way she could occupy her days; it was the only thing she didn’t hate that much. She didn’t have friends nor passions, only small interests. She had no love, only small sensations of wonder. 

On a Friday—and again, this had happened seven years ago—Alba felt a restlessness even stranger than usual. Every Friday, she felt exhausted, and a wave of sadness would engulf her. She was both happy and sad: happy because on Saturday she would retreat into her small world and nothing would drag her out of it, and sad because her world was slightly horrible and lonely, though she wasn’t even aware of that. She didn’t realize her own unhappiness.

That Friday, the office seemed quieter than usual; conversations seemed muffled, as if not meant to reach her ears. She walked past her boss’s half-open door and, by chance, heard whispers. Two colleagues were inside, and one of them was laughing—loudly and a lot—about something she didn’t understand.  

“Oh yes, so she thinks she can do whatever she wants? Her dismissal is already decided for Monday. Henrique’s not going to let that kind of behavior slide.”

Alba’s stomach turned. She stood there for a moment. She knew exactly why she was being dismissed. Two days earlier, her boss Henrique had asked her to drive some papers to a client in another city. But she refused—she was afraid of driving long distances. She knew her refusal hadn’t gone over well. She should have delivered those papers!

“I really am a stupid coward! If I’d at least faced that silly fear…”

“And now, now what? I can’t be without a job.”

“I have few options.”

She felt hatred toward herself. Hatred toward her coworkers. And most of all, hatred toward her boss.

The feeling that the world was conspiring against her intensified. She felt the heat of anger rising up her neck. “But not this time!” she thought. People had trampled all over her in a thousand situations, but not this time—they would *not* walk over her this time.

She returned to her desk, but she no longer knew how to focus. Every little laugh in the office seemed like mockery, an attack against her. So she would be tossed aside just like that? As if she were nothing, like she’d always been—a little nothing.

But she had the strength to get through this. She would accept her fate as she accepted the rain—without resistance. But with a silent grudge. Yet revolt was already putting down the deepest roots inside her. Henrique—that man with dark, piercing eyes, a severe presence, who at times seemed to understand the beauty of power—that man made her feel both nausea and desire. He was more than just a boss. He was someone she could never be.

That night, she devised her plan. She would not only destroy him, but the entire concept he represented – all the structures that always smashed her. If she would fall, she would take together the basis of her ruin. “The evil also builds, evil is also necessary”. 

She knew Henrique would work late that night to meet a deadline. Alba was there. In the dark office, only a lamp illuminated the boss’s office. He raised his head in surprise:

“Alba? What are you doing here at this hour?” 

She closed the door behind her. 

The next morning, the newspapers were talking about a mysterious crime. A body found with no obvious marks of violence; the face serene. 

Alba walked through the city streets, feeling the cold morning breeze. The café on the corner was already open, she sat in a corner and ordered tea with honey. A man sat at the table next to her, folding the newspaper he had just bought. Alba saw the headline “Mysterious death of businessman puzzles authorities” 

There was so much media buzz, her face was exposed. She was not guilty of the crime, but somehow, she caused it all. 

But no, she hadn’t killed him.

At that night, after she closed the door, she decided to let go of all her assumptions and embrace the wildness. Henrique had previously suggested they should someday get together and explore new things… She was up for that that night. But it was too much for him. He died of a heart attack, and the drugs they took might have contributed.  

The life after this event was not the same, she only felt worse. She became a shadow—present, but never quite welcomed. Invitations stopped. Job interviews ended in vague smiles. Her name, though never printed beside a charge, left a bitter taste. She was a woman who had been too close to death. That was enough.

What she’d felt for Henrique hadn’t been love. That became clear with time. It was something more primal—need, power, hunger. An urge to disappear into another person and take them down in the process. It was never about connection. It was about escape.

She had hoped, irrationally, that destruction might cleanse her. That pain could become meaning. But there was no revelation. Only the slow erosion of who she used to be, replaced by someone quieter, harder, untouchable.

She was not hated. She was forgotten.

And in that silence, she understood she had never learned how to love. Not him. Not herself. Not anyone.

Just survival. And that was all that remained.

———————————————————————————–

Maybe not always that tragic, but so many people live like Alba, full of nothing. Or like Henrique, killed by passive passions. 

They both had no sense of virtue or belonging. Nothings besides shallow waters. 

Even people with sad pasts can heal themselves to love again, but this must be an active venture. Most importantly, it needs conscience and intention to heal. Hate and anger might be passive consequences and lead to bitterness. To turn any bad into something good, however, requires energy and will. 

And why would someone put so much effort into that? Is happiness always guaranteed? Indeed, we must have trust and believe in a better outcome, this is our promise when learning the art of love. But love itself asks nothing in return, and when it does, it is not love. It is all about giving. Love is a paradox, the more we give, the more we become. It multiplies. And in love we can give that what we have that is unique and authentic – ourselves. Through the experience of loving, we also uncover ourselves to the world. Beyond shells, the souls connect. 

That is the power of love. I can imagine a bright future for those who pursue it.