The Cactus in Bloom…

This story is one of the stories from our book A Woman’s World, created together with Miklós Vámos.

The world of women could fairly be called one of the most mysterious forms of chaos in the universe — at least from a man’s point of view.

It is true that women can pay attention to several things at once and distinguish shades between black and white.

Yet even we do not always fully understand the processes of our own minds.

Deep inside us live countless suppressed emotions and unspoken thoughts that make us even more mysterious.

Sometimes, however, something happens that suddenly illuminates one of our blind spots.

I would like to share a fragment of my own world in the hope that gathering these experiences together may also give you something to think about.

I have to begin at the roots.

Family plays the most defining role in shaping our inner world at the beginning of life.

I wish I could continue by saying that as a little girl I was already Daddy’s princess.

Growing up without a father may be hard enough.

Perhaps even more painful, however, is growing up with a parent who, instead of supporting you, seems to use every available tool to place obstacles in your path.

The lack of emotional and financial support was only the beginning.

Even the camera that fascinated me as a child was deliberately hidden from me so I could not use it.

That instability pushed me to search for balance in other areas.

Watching my father use money as a means of control made me decide very early:

I will do everything I can to make sure I never become financially dependent on another person.

Throughout secondary school, I set the bar above the maximum.

I moved forward with one goal in mind:

Getting into a state-funded international business degree programme with extremely high entrance requirements.

I succeeded.

That put me on a road toward financial independence.

At the same time, however, the emotional side of my story remained one long search.

Because of my family circumstances, I was “forced” into mature thinking and conscious planning early.

So in my mind there was no question:

I needed a serious partner.

The long selection process eventually paid off.

Through a mutual friend, I met Máté.

He matched the detailed set of criteria I had developed partly as self-protection.

I was frightened of emotional wounds and therefore found it difficult to let anyone close.

That made me all the more grateful when, in a relationship based on mutual love, I finally felt as though I had become someone’s “princess”.

For the first half of our relationship, everything felt like a fairy tale.

Exactly the kind of relationship I had imagined.

We considered each other best friends.

Both of us lived busy lives.

Our days were never boring.

We were always inventing some kind of madness that I still remember as a collection of wonderful experiences.

Máté was the sports-obsessed dreamer.

I was the rational one.

That meant I often had to pull him back to earth so he would remember everyday obligations.

But at the same time, I allowed his adventurous imagination to carry me away now and then too.

As our lives became more deeply intertwined, conflicts became more frequent.

There were more and more situations in which we had to act, decide and perform as a couple — as one unit.

That was often difficult because we came from very different family backgrounds and thought in different ways.

Finding alignment was not always easy.

Especially because this was the first serious relationship for both of us.

We had no earlier experience to guide us.

At first, I made the mistake of not mentioning every small hurt.

Then the tension built up until eventually the bomb exploded.

Even our arguments were relatively civil.

No doors slamming.

No obscene screaming.

The real problem was that Máté usually experienced criticism not as a starting point for change but as an attack.

That created a destructive circle.

Eventually I was the only one still hoping we might find a way out.

Instead of looking for solutions, more and more arguments ended with him saying:

“I can’t live up to your expectations.

You should find somebody who appreciates you more.”

Of course I did not want to hear that.

I believed he was far too valuable to simply push away.

And without realising it, I slowly became the only person carrying the full weight of our relationship — with all its beauty and all its problems — on my back.

There were symptom-free periods too.

That is why the breakup hit like lightning from a clear sky on a cold day at the end of December.

Almost no warning.

At the bottom of the steps in front of our building.

It felt like a hit-and-run.

Excuses invented from thin air.

Silence tightening around my throat.

Then the monologue was over.

My questions were unanswered.

From one second to the next, I was single.

He turned away and walked off.

He looked back several times while I collapsed onto the ground, drowning in tears.

Then I lost sight of him as he disappeared around the corner.

My 2017 began with a major clearing-out.

I collected every one of his belongings into a huge promotional shopping bag.

I rang the bell at his home.

In the spirit of “new year, new beginning”, I handed over the broken fragments of our shared past that were still in my possession.

Cleaning up the emotional ruins was nowhere near as efficient.

During the first weeks, I suffered psychosomatic symptoms I had never experienced before.

I completely lost my appetite.

That was especially dangerous because I had always been the “forty kilos soaking wet” type.

There was no extra weight for me to lose.

Eventually I reached the point where I had to stop myself.

At that rate, my chances of remaining physically well did not look particularly good.

Rational thinking had pulled me out of many difficult situations before.

Now it became my final refuge.

I forced myself to complete my annual YearCompass for 2016 «|» 2017.

It is a planner that helps you review the previous year and design the next.

The irony of fate was that the breakup happened almost exactly at the end of the calendar.

Still, it gave me an excellent opportunity to organise my thoughts.

It took several bittersweet days to complete every box.

The panic-like shock slowly began to settle.

My thoughts became clearer.

Then my focus gradually shifted toward planning the new year.

I remembered a moment several months earlier when we had also been standing on the edge of breaking up.

The final words had almost been said.

For one second Máté hesitated.

Then, with his voice breaking, he whispered:

“Promise me you’ll always stay this smiling.”

In my upset state, I forced out a negative answer.

While wiping my blurred eyes with a tissue, I noticed that he had started sobbing too.

That moment burned deeply into my memory.

During our two years together — apart from the funeral of someone close to him — I had never seen him cry.

Thinking about it later, I finally understood the weight of his words.

I made myself a promise:

Just because one person had disappointed me, I would not take away from everyone around me the energetic, cheerful presence they had always known and loved in me.

Once I recognised that responsibility, I realised something else:

Based on what I show to the world, many people would happily trade places with me.

Even if they often have no idea what is happening inside.

I was grateful that during those two years, the relationship had not completely rearranged my priorities.

I had always continued making time for the things that mattered:

family, friends, competitive sport, studies.

Perhaps that discipline was one of the qualities people admired in me.

Balance was not easy.

Since then, I protect it even more consciously.

Many people make the mistake of placing everything on one card.

Their partner becomes their entire world.

Then if the relationship ends, they are left with nothing.

Fortunately, the romantic fog never intoxicated me enough to begin digging that kind of hole beneath myself.

So after the breakup, I was not forced to climb out of total emptiness.

Still, the painful process of separation wounded me.

I compensated for that weakened emotional state with more and more physical exercise.

I wanted to regain solid ground as quickly as possible.

I moved beyond my comfort zone and tried new forms of movement.

I began following the old philosophy of a healthy mind in a healthy body.

My perspective changed in another area too:

The world of dreams I had carried since childhood.

Until then, I had not taken those dreams seriously enough.

Because of my father’s influence, I had given myself an ultimatum.

My priority was independence and financial security.

I invested my strongest abilities into building a stable, predictable career.

But Máté’s attitude left another kind of influence behind.

I began considering photography not merely as something I loved, but as a possible future profession.

Until then, I doubted whether I could create a living from such a beautiful field.

Gradually, however, I began to believe that with the determination and humility that characterise me, it could become possible over time.

The most important step was setting clear goals and defining the road toward them.

A year has passed since then.

I have now completed a vocational qualification in photography and photographic-product retail.

That was the first step.

Alongside university, I am trying to learn as much as possible about the profession while also enjoying the process of becoming better.

The blow of the breakup contributed enormously to this shift because it forced me to redesign my future.

So what is the lesson?

Everybody carries their own heaviest bag.

Still, sometimes it is worth stopping for a moment and asking:

Does every weight we carry actually serve our happiness?

Or is part of it unnecessary baggage that habit and attachment prevent us from putting down?

Recognising the difference can hurt.

Sometimes we do not realise on our own that change is necessary.

For me, the breakup became exactly that turning point.

It made me stop and seriously consider what I needed to do differently.

Inside our relationship, I often played the role of a mirror.

I tried to show Máté where I believed his mistakes were.

Usually those observations did not find receptive — let alone understanding — ears.

He struggled with the fact that I consistently performed very well in my studies.

Beside me, he sometimes felt inferior.

Not because he lacked ability.

He lacked motivation.

His own extraordinary talent was sport.

There was barely a sport in which he had not won some kind of medal.

Their huge aquarium upstairs was practically surrounded by awards.

I had every reason to be proud of him.

His family background was far more balanced than mine.

Perhaps that made it difficult for him to understand that my intense internal drive to perform was actually a self-validation mechanism born from a hunger for love.

That also explains why I never demanded more from him than I demanded from myself.

At first glance, that sounds fair.

Until someone understands my unusually high capacity for pressure and work.

Perhaps that was one of the central problems.

There was another fact I kept pushing under the carpet.

The thing I wanted most from the beginning gradually became the thing he feared most:

Staying beside each other for a lifetime.

For him, that became too great a task.

His life had already been relatively balanced before we met.

I, on the other hand, needed something to hold onto while trying to restore balance in mine.

I found that balance through him.

Naturally, I clung to that support as long as I could.

As the relationship became more serious, he increasingly tried to escape the pressure.

Eventually, with no better solution, he chose simply to run.

He left chaos.

An empty space.

Open questions.

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Since then, I have tried to assemble my own answers.

With varying degrees of success and an uncertain amount of objective truth.

Today, instead of focusing on the hurt, I focus more on the lesson.

I collected the pieces of the “mirror” he broke.

By holding those fragments up in front of myself, I can understand the forces moving inside my own emotional world more clearly.

And I sincerely hope the superstition about seven years of bad luck for breaking a mirror spares him.

After all, once upon a time we truly were best friends.

And I can be grateful to him for one important thing:

Since then, I have learned to walk my own path without a crutch.

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