And that is why I am sitting here writing these lines (Chapter 2 of the book Můj neviditelný manžel Rajneesh Pranapati)

What was actually the reason for our love? What was actually the reason for our wedding? Was it because I didn't want to be alone?

To tell you the truth, I hadn't thought about it until then. Yes, I longed for a relationship. But as time went on, it became clearer – more obvious – that I was walking my life's journey alone – without a man who wanted to share sorrows and joys with me – or in the reverse order, if you prefer.

A fundamental realization for me was that eighty percent of the time I longed for a relationship for selfish reasons – so that someone would take care of me. At the time when my mother bought me an apartment (which I paid back to her until the time of my great mourning), the whole thing became clear to me. Suddenly I stopped longing for a relationship as a form of security.

Rather, I started to enjoy "flying solo". It is something frequently experienced by divorced women – abandoned women. I don't know anything like that about men. They usually dropped a wire lower for twenty-somethings.

It's the same with gays. At a certain age, they start looking for younger ones and ones so young – that one cannot even imagine they could possibly be serious. So – I too – when I realized I was standing in the vacuum of social and dating networks – and at the same time in a zone of disinterest – began to fall into something that is not talked about – a midlife crisis.

And only when I crawled out of mourning – and sometime around when I shook off the (superfluous) gray layer of my middle age – Rajneesh called out suddenly, out of nowhere.

When I think about it—preceded as it was by other circumstances—namely two important weddings: my mother's wedding and my father's wedding. In both cases, their second wedding. While they, in their mature age, entered into second marriages after several years of cohabitation in new relationships, I had not had a single multi-year relationship behind me.

My longest relationship was eleven months in 2002. And that concludes the list of my romantic relationships.

And it makes sense. Most people after 2002, and the vast majority after 2012—with the advent of smartphones (and I write it that way intentionally)—are losing real contact with reality... with real people—and getting entangled in more or less successful relationship threads on the network.

For myself, I can calmly say that I didn't have my smartphone until sometime after 2013, that is, around the time when no one at the bus stop would even look up at me anymore—let alone say hello. Smartphones sealed the mouths of the old, the young, children—without distinction.

For me, the descent into this black hole was more of a hope that I would start communicating with someone.

*

I gave away my heart in my relationships—scattered all over the world. To a Spanish seer, a Brazilian musical artist. I gave away my heart in unexpected places—I dedicated a part to India. I dedicated a part to Hong Kong. I gave a part to my first partner. I gave a part to Kranti. I gave a part to... and the more I gave, the more shattered I became.

My heart was shattered, and yet from its depths I kept giving and giving.

*

No wonder a deep mourning came—which simply had to come. It just had to happen one day. And so, at the beginning of 2020, even before the coronavirus hit the world, a family friend of mine passed away.

And then my love from Brazil.

And then my grandmother's neighbor, whom I remembered from childhood.

*

In that mourning was the mourning for everything I had lost.

And it was invisible.

Just as a person fears a virus because it cannot be seen—and panics when people around them fall ill. I was mourning—and didn't know for what. I didn't know, I wasn't aware of what I had lost. When you can't see it—you can't imagine it. And somewhere here Rajneesh helped me and led me to create the Mourning card set. To give expression, form to what is invisible.

Somewhere here he gave me guidance on how to live with it.

And that is why I am sitting here writing these lines.