Although there was always something within me that was smouldering, as if my body and I were simply waiting for a spark to ignite that dormant fire.

Then the wish became more vocal. I started telling people I’d love to find something, some kind of activity that would make sense, that I would genuinely love doing. And I even tried some things, like swimming. Since I didn’t hate it (unlike everything I had tried up until that point, which was mostly school sports and running 1500 metres with a red face and mild heart attacks every seven steps), I automatically assumed it was what I loved. Spoiler: no. I don’t. I love being in water, but doing laps isn’t for me. A few years later, I got to see what it looks like when someone is really into swimming. My best friend is amazing at it and enjoys it thoroughly, and it’s such a happy sight to see someone love something so much.

Other things I tried included yoga and running. Both done extremely clumsily and on the verge of being harmful. Yoga couldn’t manage to fuck anything up, but running in €30 Decathlon shoes really did leave a mark on my knees. Oh, and did I mention I weighed a whopping 35 kg more back then? My knees still haven’t fully recovered, even though now I spoil them with HOKAs.

Fast forward to last August. The 4th, to be precise. Coincidentally, the first page of my book and the day I got divorced. My cortisol was killing me, so I went for a run. A short one. It felt good.

And then, the next day would go down in history as the first day I went to the gym. Also, let’s add a Post-it to that history page saying, “The first time she cried at the gym.” The first, and not even close to being the last.

I did everything and anything that made me feel something. I climbed, I ran, I cycled and power-walked to Gracie Abrams. And step by step, it healed me. It still does. I found the pebbles that built me into who I am now. I had time to think and sort through the mountain of things my mind consists of. I rode the endorphin wave for as long as I needed, until I could walk on my own again. I found my God in all of it.

I still do.

I am writing this while pedalling my ninth kilometre. Because I am so angry I could crash and burn whole towns. With every movement, the cortisol gives way to endorphins, and all the Spanish pueblos are safe.

As long as I have my gym pulsera, that is.

You’re walking down the street when suddenly the wind carries a familiar scent, one of orange blossom. Boom, you’re in Marseille, April 2024, sitting by the yachts at Vieux-Port, listening to a street musician play the same song for what seems like an eternity. Maybe it was his only song. You’re eating gelato with your daughter and discussing the quality of baguettes in Southern France, and you can’t believe you actually have a daughter you can do this with. Because you feel about 23.

And then there’s another day. You catch the scent of chicory coffee and might as well start walking around with a sign that says I invented the time machine, because there you are. Back at the communal apartment right across the street from a Hare Krishna restaurant. The first place you lived after moving out of your parents’ place. You’re sitting on an orange fold-out couch, smoking the fourth cigarette you rolled from Cutters Choice tobacco you bought in a little red shop in Burnt Oak, London, because you couldn’t afford regular cigarettes. That tobacco was amazing. It was so soft and rolled magnificently. Wouldn’t go anywhere near it now.

Scents occupy at least a good third of my launchpad. Most of them are natural, but there are a couple of fragrances that double as old boots that double as Portkeys, just like they did in the Goblet of Fire. One spray of Pacific Paradise by Escada and you're in Paris and Le Havre in 2006, when everyone was so free that the feeling demands a completely different word for freedom. That time tasted like Gato Negro Cabernet Sauvignon and watermelon lip balm from H&M in a little green tin, with Vaka by Sigur Rós blasting through the very questionable speakers of a red Volkswagen Golf that eventually broke down somewhere between Brussels and Berlin.

Oh, yes. And then there’s music. Oh my God, the music. The easiest and quickest way to travel through time and space. I could write an entire book of song stories. There are just so many, and they intertwine with scents and textures and tastes.

You listen to The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived by Taylor Swift and, God forbid, you’re wearing your Strawberry Shortcake lip balm because, whoooooosh, you’re back on that OUIGO train from Madrid to Valencia after the Sombr concert. Your legs are shaking. Your friend is wearing her purple jacket that says Lick a clit across the back, her dark curly hair falling effortlessly around her shoulders while she chuckles at your stories of misfortune that you still considered fortune then.

Then you listen to Imiskoubria and, clickity-click, you’re somewhere in Cholargos, tasting orange IQOS cigarettes and looking at collectibles in a vintage video game store you’ve never actually been to.

And then the pink pad lights up on your already pretty busy, blinking launchpad, followed by the pale green one and then the blue. And that’s how you move through life. Something new happens and you don’t even notice that another button is being written. A smell, a chord, a taste, a texture, a person, a street, a sentence. Suddenly there’s another place you can return to without moving an inch.

There have been a few moments in my life when there was simply no more space left on the pad. Too many buttons flashing at once. And when that happens, there’s nothing to do but wait until a few of them stop blinking. Then, eventually, I can get back to making music.

So yeah, that’s how it feels. And I wouldn’t change it for the world.

Oh, another pad just lit up.

It’s not particularly valuable. It’s not Persian, it wasn’t handwoven by my great-grandmother, and I would never hang it on the wall like people used to do in the Soviet Union.

It’s just a carpet.

More specifically, it’s the crying carpet.

I don’t remember exactly when we started calling it that. I only know that at some point during the past year, it became the designated place in our home for falling apart.

I cried there. My kids cried there. And, most importantly, all of us, we met there.

If one of us would be having a terrible day, another would always sit down next to them, and eventually there would be three people on a kitchen carpet, talking, crying and hugging until whatever enormous problem had brought us there became smaller. Sometimes the problem was really enormous. Sometimes, especially when you’re raising children, the problem was… reduced iPhone time. Yeah, I know, the emotional range of the crying carpet has always been impressive.

There were times when my friend Alida found me there, curled up and sobbing about the end of a situationship with a Greek man I'd met once, for five hours. And there were times when all three of us somehow ended up there together. Three musketeers on a kitchen carpet, one for all and all for one. Nobody particularly qualified for the situation, but everybody reporting for duty anyway.

And sometimes we even managed to turn our crying carpet into a flying one. The problem would shrink, and somewhere in the shrinking we'd start making plans instead - trips, futures, dreams that had nothing to do with why we'd sat down. And after all of that… we always got up. Went to school. Travelled. Made music. We cooked, fought, apologised and laughed until abs appeared on our chocolate chip cookie-stuffed bellies.

But then, due to an underwhelming lack of overwhelming events, our crying carpet became a simple kitchen carpet again.

I realised this recently when I looked down and decided I really needed to deep-clean the thing. It seems to have somehow abandoned its original purpose. Instead of tear stains and snot marks, all I can see now are watercolor stains, cookie crumbs and something that loosely resembles tea leaves.

But maybe that’s the best possible fate for a crying carpet. And I would have probably let it be that way, if it weren't for a conversation I had this morning with my daughter, on the bus on our way to the school.

She asked me what everyone would inherit when I die. A completely normal question.

Startled by her straightforwardness, I began mentally counting my worldly possessions. My instruments, books, jewellery, my great-grandmother’s wedding rings...

She stopped me.

She already knew what she wanted.

The crying carpet.

So apparently I can’t throw it away now. Ever. Because somewhere along the way, this completely ordinary piece of our home became our family heirloom.

So I’m going to have to clean the crying carpet.

Because one day, hopefully many, many years from now, my daughter intends to inherit a completely ordinary kitchen carpet that isn’t ordinary at all.

And when she does, I hope she remembers more than the crying. I hope she remembers the chocolate chip cookie crumbs too. I hope she remembers that whenever one of us ended up on the floor, the others always came down too.

And then we all got back up.

You see, I’m a relationship writer. I write about connections, encounters, love, sex and friendship, and all the other ways humans can possibly interact with each other.

So, let’s say I have a friend. And that friend becomes more and more significant. Significant enough to have an actual story about him, anyway. So what do we call the friend? I almost never use anyone’s real name, as these things sometimes tend to become a little... sensitive.

My first book has a character in it. An awful, abusive, ambiguous man. I called him C. It seemed like the right choice, as the letter itself felt pretty self-sufficient for a character of his type. Then there was the Greek God. Can you guess his nationality? Yeah, thought so.

And then there were many other characters who kind of made me stutter a little when trying to define them. There was a guy who was initially a date, then a partner in crime, and then, after a cool non-date, I told him I liked that we were “friends who kiss.” His reaction was something along the lines of, “Do we need to call this anything?” And that got me thinking. Why are we so afraid of labelling things when it’s obviously so much fun?

For instance, why settle for something as ambiguous as a “connection” when you can call the people in your life one of the following?

• The Indian guy who was supposed to be the devil but turned out to be a kitten

• The star of my smut stories whose Apple Music library I would love to steal and never give back

• The two-too-many-restraining-orders ranger

• The sandcastles-in-the-sky wonder I never had the honour of meeting but almost built an entire life with in my head

• The Cannonbolter

• The so-you’re-a-Dutch-king-and-we-share-custody-of-a-goat-named-Jacob guy

• The “I specifically said not your workplace” workplace date

• The once-a-month “Heeeeeeyyyy yooou” cheerleader

• The “Please don’t fall in love with me” cautionary tale

• The “Didn’t quite feel it but for some reason still said ‘See you soon’ at the end of the date” guy

• The “I guess I have to call the police” connection

• The “Was almost dismantled around the cliffs of Eastern Spain” cutie pants

• The “Three days of silence apparently counts as communication” cowboy

• The “I blocked you but unfortunately my vulva didn’t” situation

• The “I can fix him” internship I never applied for

• The “I don’t want commitment but would like unlimited access to your emotional interior” gentleman

• The guy who accidentally made me Google whether dominatrix was a personality type

• The “Two voice notes and suddenly we’re back in business” equation

• The “Please use another big word, I’m almost there” Feeld guy

• The one who has been written off so many times he’s basically a tax deduction

• The “Safe, calm and therefore initially suspicious” potential villain

• The one who accidentally helped me discover the perfect no-kiss exit strategy

...and so many more completely fictional labels, of course!

Why would we deprive ourselves of this much fun when we can simply lean into it?

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