The albatross journey

11 - Confused thoughts

Can

I'm leaving London on a direct flight to Belgrade, staying the first month in Serbia and then moving on to Bosnia, Montenegro and Kosovo, maybe even Albania.

I realise that I am completely unfocused on the job I was hired for.
I'm very confused and I can't stop thinking about what happened.

How did I get here?

How much did I let my mother and Polen manipulate me into such a drastic decision and how much was due to my own intransigence?

I spend the first week in the flat part of Serbia and then I start the slow ascent towards the Dinaric Alps. I work mechanically without being able to concentrate and get passionate about what I am doing.
I feel empty, for the first time in my life I feel completely lost and in the middle, I feel that I am missing an essential part and I don't want to admit even to myself what I am missing, or rather who.

I think about her too often, I am torn by the thought that she is convinced that I am back together with Polen and, at a certain point, I come to the determination that it is not fair that she thinks the worst of me because of those two intriguing women. I pluck up courage and one evening decide to dial her number to explain what actually happened.
The phone rings for a long time while my heart is pounding, but it's all for nothing, she doesn't answer. I call several times with the same result and finally I send her a message saying that I would like to talk to her, I see the check mark appear and from that moment on her phone starts to be unreachable.

I feel a dull ache when I realise that she doesn't intend to answer, doesn't intend to talk to me. I would have just wanted to clear up the misunderstanding created by that stupid article, I would have just wanted to explain what had really happened... I realize in a flash of awareness that I am repeating in my mind exactly the words with which Sanem had begged me to listen to her after our fight at the cabin.

After all, what was she asking me? She wanted to CLARIFY, she wanted to EXPLAIN why she had given the perfume formula to Fabbri and I was adamant, I didn't want to listen in any way. Now she is doing the same thing to me and I must admit that it hurts, it hurts like hell not to be taken into consideration, to be categorically ignored.

I realise now that I have been stubborn and unfair, I should have given her the chance to explain the situation as I would like to do now with her. Maybe in the end things would not have been settled anyway, or who knows ... and that who knows becomes for me a glimmer that opens in a door that I had decided was closed permanently and that, now instead, could mean everything.

Days pass, weeks pass, the first month passes and I have stopped trying to call her, but that "who knows" haunts me as if it were my worst enemy. The days in the impassable mountains keep body and mind busy with work, but the nights become an agony of "ifs" and "who knows".
Time passes, but I can't let go of what has been to return to the free and carefree life I lived before her, I can't do it. I can't do what I set out to do when I left, to get on with my life without thinking about what I've left behind, who I've left behind.

My nights are filled with dreams that somehow allow me for a few moments not to feel that constant weight in the middle of my chest. In my dreams she is still mine and she smiles at me with that smile that made me lose my head and my heart right away.
In my dreams of her I feel alive and vital again, I feel as complete as I have been in my life only by her side.

During the transfer between Serbia and Bosnia I pluck up courage and call Emre, we didn't part in the best way the last time we spoke and I don't know what to expect now.

- Abi? -

- Hello Emre -

- How are you Can? Are you OK? Where are you? -