Today another little sneak peek into my book Labelled Love.

Photo & Editing: Ralph Wietek

A Borrowed Life

Have you ever seen a musician playing their instrument?
Say, a violinist playing so passionately that not only the music itself, but his facial expression and the passion expressed through his body moves you, touches you?
Well, I have seen many people, many different people in passionate moments. I saw musicians playing, dancers practicing their choreographies, I saw people kissing, crying, smiling through the tears. I saw you. In a restaurant. With her. Talking. Cards on the table. Within this heartfelt drama your passion took over and you reached for her neck while she was talking and you kissed her. Passionately.
And I have seen her. Sitting at her desk, her laptop in front of her. She started writing and suddenly the keyboard became a piano, her head slightly tilting to the left, a facial expression between passion and pain. The corner of her mouth forming a little smile, yet her eyes filled with tears, her hands gently moving across the keyboard, the laptop becoming an instrument, her hands forming a melancholic melody on paper:

I have been living a borrowed life. My life has never been my own. It was always about other people’s happiness. Never about my own.
I always thought that once somebody liked or loved me, I’d have to like or love them back. Because I knew how it felt to be unhappy in love and so I wanted to avoid doing the same thing to them as was done to me. So, I convinced myself to like them, to love them. And yes, you can convince yourself to have certain emotions until you nearly believe them yourself. But there will always remain this little spark, this little part inside of you that knows that it is not completely right, not fully correct, that it is not as authentic as it could have been if it were real.
I have been so many different people in my life. That’s why I am a good, maybe even a great actress.
It was never about me, it was about the others, so I slipped into the roles that contributed to their happiness. And they believed me. Because I believed myself.
But the truth sneaks up behind you and gets you in retrospect. And then you discover that the truth does not lie in retrospect, but that you already knew when you were in that particular situation. But you convinced yourself to believe differently.
And then you discover: I have been living a borrowed life. A life that has never been my own.
You turn around and you oppose yourself by saying: My life has always been my own. But I got lost along the road I went.
And then you doubt, and then you get desperate and then you lift your tear filled eyes to the sky above and you revolt and you rebel. And you promise yourself to go and get your life back, to not back down, to fight for your life and to become better than you were before.
But then there are these silent moments. These moments where you have a lump in your throat and you look into the mirror and your gleaming eyes show desperation while your lips form a smile and you say: If this is what I am meant to be, if this is why I am here on earth, to contribute to the happiness of others and putting my own aside, I will pay the price. I will live a borrowed life in order to fulfil my destiny. If this is what it is, then let it be so. But I will reserve some parts for myself, some secrecy. But other than that, it’s alright, if this is what I am really here for.
And you know that the only issue with these thoughts is, that you just don’t know.
You just know, whatever path it is that you have to take, you are going to take it, make it, be it borrowed, be it your own, you’re not going to bend over or back down. You’re going to slip into another role that somebody else or life itself wrote for you and you’re going to go with it.
I am not going to say that one day I will have to set you free. Because you were never caged. But one day I might have to let you go. And I will. Because this is love. And love is the only truth I know. The only truth that cannot be concealed with make-up or by imposing a role on it. This doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t fight. And it doesn’t mean that I would resign over it. This just means, that besides all the roles I played, all the lives I lived and all the contributions I made, this will be a moment when I stick to the very truth that lies deep inside our hearts.
I’ve been so many different people in my life.
But once you set me free, or rather you helped me to set myself free, for once. For once, there was no script. For once, it was about me. And I appreciate that. I will always keep that beside the truth that is inscribed onto my heart.
This little spark of truth that once was revealed to me shall accompany me on my way.
For once, I lived my life. For once, it was mine.
For once, there was you.
I have been so many different people in my life.
I lived.
A borrowed life.

Gina Laventura © 2014