Lola, Mexico.

How far do we go for love? Till what level can we call ourselves sane, and where do we become naïve, crazy? People always advice you to follow your heart, and I love the saying that states that as long as you shoot for the moon, you’ll either reach it or end up somewhere between the stars. So when we meet someone special, it makes sense that we lower our career plans, or cancel on a wine night with friends, right? Or as Damiano David gave words to my case in Måneskin’s Timezone: “Tomorrow I’ve got another plane, I’m not gonna take it. Instead I’ll be flying straight to you, I paid double for the ticket.”

I feel blessed every time I meet a person that makes me want to dive deep in unsafe waters. It’s the numbness of the brain that gets me high on the endless crave. It’s the giving in to the surrender while fighting your hardest for the thing that you want. The more you enjoy this emotional whirlpool, the harder it is to get back to the surface when your heart gets broken. And then you wonder why people take risks like this.

But I can say that it is these moments, these people, the ones that make you walk on the edge, that make you experience living life in the only way that is worth living for.

Choosing love while leaving love behind

How far do we go for love? In Lola’s case 8488 kilometres. In the middle of COVID, her plane lands in Amsterdam on a cold day in March. Just like every time she arrives in a new place, she dissociates from reality. Where am I? How did I get here? What did I do? She needs time to fully settle in.

Not just because of the level of cold that is not known in Mérida, not just because of how the landscape does not meet the diverse beauty of Yucatán.

Not just because of the people who waited for her at Schiphol’s Arrival Section, who were not only her new employers, but also in a way her house mates, maybe in a way her new family.

Way more she needed to adapt to the idea that the person she planned to spend the next phase of her life with, broke up with her on the day Lola received her EU-visa. She considered cancelling the trip. But her inner fire of self-love won from the sadness that a broken heart causes. And with that, she decided to build up a life in The Netherlands by herself.

A crazy thing called love

Love is a crazy thing. While growing up, Lola never played with the idea of going abroad. She never saw herself leaving her hometown, away from the family she holds so dearly. She grew up feeling close till her mom, still. She is the type of mom that provides her girl with both physical and emotional presence, the one that helped out with homework, but also planned multiple daytrips a month to the beach. Lola remembers cozy sleep overs at her grandmother’s home, and celebrations with family and friends for which she dressed up with that little extra special. So when she reached the age of 18, when it’s considered normal to take a gap year abroad, Lola was more than happy with the idea of just staying home.

The only thing that could make her move a day-drive away to Guadalajara, was someone special. It was the feeling of being in love for the first time that made her pack her bag and leave. Just like that. ‘People couldn’t believe it. But I did it.’ It was an adventure. They had only met ones in real-life before Lola took the jump. It was an exciting love, not only because of how it made her move to another part of the country, but also for coming out as lesbian, experiencing the excitement of openly spreading her love for this girl she fell for so deeply.

The test called life

We all remember our first love. The butterflies, feeling nervous around the person. Holding hands while watching a movie, sharing the popcorn. Finally getting the kiss you fantasized of for so long…

We all also remember how crushed we were when it ended. The heartache, not being able to leave the bed. Eyes that burn from crying, jaws that hurt from screaming. It’s a phase that challenges us to find our way back up. I recently learned how the way we handle life, is based on our ability to bounce back after something hits us. All of us follow a self-created road, based on a vision we hold for ourself. But in the test called life, we need to show how bad we want to get back on that road after being bumped off, or accept that we were lost on our journey all along, and this is a higher force showing us that there are better things to be found if we follow a little side path.

In Lola’s case, she found her new path while walking back home, after she learned that her partner mistreated her. She had already walked passed the building so many times, and now, trusting a gut feeling, she stepped inside: a pole dancing studio. The community of teachers and students she found there were the warm blanket she needed to find herself back: bold, proud, and determined to never let darkness to take over her heart. Pole was promised to be her next true love, just like other loves that were promised to follow.

Living with the Dutch

Once in The Netherlands, she had little time to get herself together. She found distraction in her au pair-kids. She holds the greatest memories of being with them, like cycling them to school in the bakfiets. She laughs thinking back on how she first needed to learn how to ride a bike: stumbling over the streets, trying to hold her balance, hitting parked cars, leaving her au pair-family in the illusion that she was already more than capable of driving these two-wheeled monsters before they hired her. But just like everything she does while learning by doing, she managed.

She quickly noticed how much freedom there is to show up as you are. She tells me about how in Mexico, she was expected to wear stiletto-pumps to work. You can imagine how challenging this is when you work as a teacher for special-needs kids… In The Netherlands, Lola feels free to go out in her pinguin pyjama. ‘I’m not shamed by people for how I look. I can wear whatever I want and even get complimented for it. People respect me and with that, I started to become more openminded and accepting towards others too.’ She doesn’t hold back to advocate for others when people try to gossip with her about them. ‘It is not on us to judge them for what we see.’

The thing she needed to get used to was the Dutch food. At first I can imagine she means the snotty texture of stamppot or the soulless “rauwkost” salads. But no: ‘I tasted the real flavour of beef for the first time!’ Being used to having the meat spiced up, she was close to puking when she experienced the more natural taste, seasoned with nothing more than some salt and pepper. ‘It was like taking a bite out of a pure cow…’

After her experience with the meatballs she got very excited to make her au pair-kids try one of the recipes she learned at home. It got her banned from the kitchen. ‘It made me so sad. My family taught me this and they just called it poison!’ On behalf of all my Dutchies, who are probably not sorry, I am so sorry for every time our directness becomes disrespectfully rude…

Happily for Lola, love always wins, no matter how much she is hurt. She doesn’t forget, but forgives easily and moves on. She continues finding love on different levels: in her work, her friendships and love-partners. In all relationship she has built in The Netherlands, she noticed that they hold a certain base of equality. She found that a Dutch relationship is a partnership, where you find stability, reliability and with that – trust.

Villain or princess

She makes me sit back for a second to just observe her. Thick black eyeliner surrounding present, confronting brown eyes. Hair divided in a Cruella DeVille blond left and black right. A tattoo of summer storm lightning creeping up to her neck, other parts of her life story immortalized as pictures on her arms. I know her well enough to know that Snoopy is represented on her shoulder.

Her voice is sharp. There is a military confidence in how she doesn’t questions, she states. Never letting go of the eye contact. If she allows you to come close, your life with her will be a rollercoaster, also shown in the music choice for her latest choreography: a Jingle Bell Rock that started as a sugar-coated Mean Girls and ended in a grunge Christmas slaughter where her former Christian school teachers would devote a praying session for.

But the more we talk, I learn that underneath these tough chick layers, there are compassion and love on which she based all her big choices in life. She moved to multiple places of the world with a full faith in true love. She became a teacher for special needs kids out of love for equal opportunities. She opened her own pole dancing studio out of love for the women who were seeking the proof for existing. She travels miles for a short family visit, even though the dance show on the day before numbed every vain in her body.

It doesn’t always seem like, but it are the outcasts, the ones that have been broken, the ones that seem to push others away, that have the most love to give.

To the moon and back

While we are so busy to shoot for our moon, we sometimes forget that for some, we are that moon. Some of them reach us as small step-visitors, some chill in our craters during their summer vacation, some scar our surface by planting a flag before they leave and never return. And some make an effort to learn how to make us their now home. It is our challenge to recognize them on time.

Lola has shot for the moon more than ones. And she did not always enjoy exploring the galaxy. But her staying true to herself and following her heart throughout her journey, has shown that life has beautiful things planned for her, also when things don’t go as expected. It blessed her a self-created milky way of stars, that learned how to shine their light by taking her as their example. And she inspires me to check in with myself and include my heart a bit more into my decisions, trusting that life will go on, and good things will come.

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