Being Hinksch

I could pretend this is about Halloween, but the truth is less supernatural: my ghosts are still very much alive, and it doesn't take much for them to manifest around me. This week, particularly, they are all coming together. By pure chance, I should add. So I will approach this in stages, I'll deal with them one by one. Or at least I'll try to, as I haven't been able to properly deal with this for a year so far. But I digress. For the sake of this exercise, I'll name them one, two and three, in the chronological order that they moved to the other side. We start with one. One I won't talk about what happened, because this has been discussed more than enough times. Both between us two, and on my own, with myself. All I want to tell you is that I am genuinely happy that you have come out of your shell. It gives me a smile whenever I see pictures of you surrounded by friends, living your best life, being a completely different person than you were when I met you. F...

Today I found out some things about myself. One of them? I'm broken. I have been broken for a while, but today I saw it. It was quite stupid, really. I was listening to a random song, one that I listened to thousands of times. But today, as soon as it started playing, it hit me. All at once. Things are not ok. I am not at the breakdown point yet, but I feel that I am on a path of no return. As of now, it is a matter of when, not if, will I break down. I am currently Ravel's bolero, about sixty per cent in. It's somewhat loud, but enough to make enough noise to be noticeable. But it's not at it's loudest. And after the loudest bit, it will end in an unbearable silence. It will end in the catharsis of me. The song I heard today was not this bolero, but bolero felt like me months ago. It was a sign, maybe the first one, and I did not see it. I did not have enough clues to see it. I am afraid. Truly afraid. I don't want to get there, even though I know I will. I mig...

I have always been a perfectionist. If you are one, you know how much a pain that can be. And in my case, I've always been a perfectionist towards myself. I'm never satisfied with what I do, I always think that I can do better. But also, whenever I set out to do something, I want it to be the absolute best, no space for anything other than perfect. That becomes particularly difficult for things in which I am not proficient. But something in my life has been slowly teaching me to try and be less perfect, and allowing myself to naked things that are great, or even good. Surprisingly, that something is my writing. I just finished writing my second book, a novel this time. It's not a Pulitzer prize contender, and I'm ok with that. Mainly because I am neither a writer, nor I ever intend to be one. But also, English is not my native language. When you think about it, just the fact that a non-native, who has no formal training in writing, was able to write not one, but two boo...

Chapter one: Anywhere but Brighton It was a cold and sunny Monday morning in January, the second day of the year, when I first entered the place where I would work for the next six months: Brighton’s police station. Our graduation ceremony took place some twenty days prior, but the holidays made it feel like it was another lifetime altogether. As I walked through the door of the police station, I thought about our final day at the academy, and the moment we were receiving our posting letters sprang to my mind. Up until that point, we had been training for the previous six months to become private investigators, and it had not been easy on any of us. We somehow formed a strong bond, and we were all very excited to see where life would take us next, who would be there with us, what we would do. After six months of books, lectures, videos and tests, we all wanted to get out of the classroom and get into the action. I remember all those things going through my mind the day I opened my lett...

He came in while I was doing a shift, and I was immediately attracted to him. He was extremely cute - still is. He was also on shift, but for a different organisation. He smiled and I melted inside. Equally fast was my conviction that he would never, ever, be into me. It's almost like I could hear a voice whispering in my ears: Hello! Have you seen him and have you seen you? Wake up, he would never look at you. Don't set yourself up for failure. We started to chat, I was extra campy and extrovert, which is the weird way my mind deals with feeling intimidated. I should be clear that he was not intimidating, but I felt that way because of my own demons. Maybe making my personality big is a way of rising to the the other person's height, the same way we are told to look big if we ever meet a bear - a real, animal one. Even though he was also a bear Oh, and my self deprecating humour, who multiplies by ten in these kind of situations. Probably, and here again I'm going in...

I was rewatching Glass Onion recently - I first saw it in the cinema when it was briefly on show - and it made me think about a song from my favourite Brazilian band, Pato Fu. The song is in Portuguese, but there's a bit of the lyrics that translate loosely to "you are like a bad movie, which I already know the end, and it's not at all original". Like Miles, one of the main characters from Glass Onion, I am not at all original. Most of the things I like and identify with, things that form my personality and my identity, are things I got from someone else. Let me start from the beginning: I always pick something up from a friend. An accent, a laughter, I swear I even picked up the need to pee more often from a friend. Whenever I become friends with someone, I incorporate something from them into my life. Then I started to think about the things I like the most in life. Poirot? Was introduced to me by a cousin. Pink Floyd: shown by another cousin. Almodovar came from a ...