From Gaia's diary
Today I spent the whole afternoon looking at old photos with the kids and Diego. We had a lot of fun, of course, but I couldn't avoid feeling nostalgic as well. Is this what people describe as being old? Feeling nostalgic and overthinking about your own past? Whatever the answer is, tonight I feel like writing down some of my thoughts from the day.
We started scrolling through the photos my parents took when I was still a little kid.
I barely remember that first apartment in the Sim City centre, it looks so microscopic now! Most of my childhood memories are from the renovated house in the port where we moved shortly after.
Did I end up being a spoiled child, I wonder? Well, maybe some of my tantrums were avoidable... What was sure, however, was that I didn't like spending all that time in school and the rest of the day doing my homework. I wanted to play outside instead, and spending time with my friends, and everything else.
Back then I complained a lot about how my parents weren't able to understand me. I mean, my dear diary, look at this photo: have you ever seen a more annoyed teen?
Indeed, disliking school and not caring about grades was unthinkable to them, and was also the cause of most of our arguments. About everything else, however, I can now see how they eventually tried to encourage me to pursue what I liked to do.
I was probably too harsh with them, after all they always had my best interest in mind in everything they did.
For all the Sixam's moons' sake, now I'm old enough to even understand why they were always so upset when I returned back home way past curfew. The city can be dangerous at night, what if something bad happened on the way back? As a parent, I can now see all the possible dangers.
Back then, instead, I tended to ignore any danger way too much. Actually, I always liked that adrenaline rush, and I loved doing quite extreme sports all my life.
I learnt how to climb mountains, for instance, and I'm pretty good at skiing down the hardest slopes. Until not so long ago I would also try incredible jumps on my ski, but it's just at this point in my life that I'm starting to prefer more relaxed activities. Mostly for my knees sake, I would say.
But my seeking for adrenaline wasn't just about sport, it soon also made me end up making some messed up choices. In particular about relationships.
But I don't want to waste any more time writing about Matt. He was a mistake. A huge, old, untrastable mistake. I was young and stupid, okay? At least I managed to walk out of it without permanent consequences, and I learnt a lesson or two also.
If there is one thing I really regret about all those years, it's all the time he made me waste in my early 20s. I lost so many chances to start a meaningful relationship, and drifted away from my school friends too. Basically, all that remained to me after the break up was my job.
At least I've always loved my first job, which consisted of the renovation of the Evergreen Harbour area, just next to Sim City. I even moved there, apparently I was among the very few people who were able to see the charm of the place already back then.
The job was related to mom's latest company, aimed to bring the New Sixam technology to all Sim City. Their project included the construction of a Stellar Core Electrical plant to give power to all the teleportation devices they planned to import, and my job consisted of renovating the rest of the neighbourhood as compensation to the local inhabitants for living next to such a big infrastructure.
It was easy for me to get the job, it was my mom's company after all, and I could spend all my days rebuilding stuff on the matter recomposer, what more could I ask for (work-wise)?
My main coworker back then was Tommy. He was the son of another of the company founders and, unlike me, he always cared about the administrative stuff and all that other boring things. In retrospect, I think I shouldn't have delegated all the decisions to him, this could have prevented some troubles later on... But desk jobs have never been for me, I much rather soil my hands with all the garbage around the neighbourhood and work in the field. Thinking about it, Tommy hated this part instead, and preferred to go hide in his office. So, who knows, that way of sharing the workload may have been inevitable, after all.
Look at this other old photo, my dear diary! The port used to be a real dump, I'm so used to seeing it clean now that I barely recognise the place in such a picture! We really had to work hard, that's for sure...
And so the days dragged on, between working and postponing the problems to the next day.
My parents had just passed away in that period, I missed having a family. And I missed having friends too. What I didn't miss, however, was a husband, I wanted to be free to make all my choices on my own.
I reasoned for a long time about how to reconcile all those problems. I had to act if I wanted to change something, but what could I do?
I ended up deciding to become a single mother. In my life I never took long to make any choice, and also that time it just felt like the right thing to do for me.
And this is how Petra was born.
And then Alec and Nico.
I always praised myself for having a lot of energies, I wasn't that worried about the perspective of taking care of my babies. Yet, a toddler Petra and newborn twins challenged my conviction several times.
This may be the reason why I ended up making another quite rushed decision...
... which is trusting the robot who suddenly showed at our door, in apparent distress.
I'd never seen a robot before. They all left for the planet Sixam when my parents were still little, how could I? Yet, there they were.
They explained me that their name was Techna, that they used to live with the Miller family until a few generations ago, and that they needed a place where to hide.
To this day I still don't know everything about them, their past and their motivations. What I know, however, is that over all these years they never gave me any reason not to trust them (actually, they have been of huge help multiple times), and that I'm very glad to have welcomed them in our house.
My life has never felt empty anymore since my kids were born. I'm actually very proud of them all, and I always made sure to spend a lot of time with them.
I even ended up finding a romantic partner right when I had stopped looking for one. But how could I not like him? Diego is funny, cooks fantastic cakes, loves travelling and also talking for hours about his adventures. Doesn't he sound like the perfect guy to you too, my dear diary?
In insight, I think it took forever for us to start dating. I mean, it's not like we were afraid of commitment or anything like that. It's just that we didn't want to make sacrifices just to accommodate a partner, not after all the hard work we did to reach that point in our lives.
I've written this so many other times before, my dear diary, I really don't know how we could take so long to reach that conclusion. We were both afraid of how a possible relationship could have ended constraining our lives, but since when that's a requisite for a relationship? People are always puzzled when I explain to them that we don't live together yet even after 15 years (or is it more?) and that we often don't see each other for weeks when I have to work or when he's travelling, but we don't care about it. We're happy spending time together when we really want to, what more could we be asking for?
I'd like to write that my life after that point had been blissful, but you know already that wasn't always the case, my dear diary.
Above all, I had an argument with Tommy. A very bad one. And an argument with consequences, I would add.
The family company was founded to help the environment by using new and greener technologies, how on Earth did he think I would agree on a plan that would cause a lot of waste and pollution because of all the perfectly functioning devices thrown away as garbage, and the materials and energy required to build the new units? I thought he shared my values, but instead all he cared about was money!
Needless to say, we didn't talk much after that scene. Actually, I also left my job during that argument. At first I responded out of anger, but soon that choice turned into an actual plan I made together with Techna.
I'm so glad I was able to convince Techna to work with me at the startup. They had been so reserved up to that point, and to this day they continue to be extremely careful about not attracting any unnecessary attention. They never shared all the details, but they seem to be very wary of the government...
In any case, we had to work hard, our plan had some scalability issues before starting to be profitable. But we managed to stay afloat, and now I reached retirement age being able to add this startup to my work achievements.
And so here we are, my dear diary. Albeit everything I said, I'm afraid I'm way less optimistic about the future than I hoped to be when reaching this point in my life. And the worst part is that the reason is outside of my control.
No, above all I'm worried about leaving them into a world that seems to be worsening year after year. How will their life be? Will they need to make big sacrifices? I can't really tell, at this point.
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