These days, social media is flooded with photos from the past decade and is pushing yet another viral trend.
All my friends are sharing photos of their younger, more naive selves, adding smiley emojis at the end. Whether they’re wearing tight clothes, have thin eyebrows, or a baby mustache, all the photos are like a trip down memory lane.
I've always sought depth, and this seemingly superficial desire for attention on social media made me stop and think.
I started going through old tapes and photos, and I began to feel a strange sense of nostalgia for days gone by, summers past, and the seas. When did 10 years fly by? That number sounds somehow impressive and a little scary.
I'll never forget that summer in 2009—or, more specifically, that sea with its fleeting memories of the "Big Tequila" in Sozopol.
We were young, in love, and part of our own big, crazy group—a super-fresh mix of incredible people I could talk about for hours, because we know each other inside and out and have shared the most wonderful moments, parties, mountains, huts, tents, and seas—but most importantly, my first and greatest love was by my side back then—Stoyan.
I close my eyes and remember 2009 as if it were yesterday. It was a great year, when I made a grand entrance into the world of the “big leagues”—or as our friend Bob from the “big games” company used to say. Ha-ha, he was a bit of a weirdo himself, with his repertoire of silly one-liners that I still sometimes repeat to myself and laugh at.
In 2009, I got on a snowboard for the first time, and I’ll never forget my first disastrous attempt at Bezbog—it’s actually a pretty funny story: after a party at a mountain hut with homemade wine, I decided I was good enough for freeriding. 😀 Well, to be honest, the story didn’t end very successfully, because even my instructor couldn’t teach me—he was also a rookie with a hangover—and we ended up tumbling down the slopes together, lost somewhere in the Pirin Mountains.
The truth is, I got hooked on snowboarding after yet another boring weekend in Sofia, while all my friends were having fun somewhere in the mountains, while I was missing out on all the “fun.” And even when we were back together, everyone was talking, joking, and laughing at the latest jokes and stories, while I felt like I wasn’t part of it. And so the time came for Moncheto to get his first board.
Such a young, passionate, and eager city nomad who willingly agreed to set out with her boyfriend on Friday at 5:30 p.m. toward the Rilski Ezera mountain hut, to a dormitory packed with 12 non-humans. No, don’t ask us how much trouble Dijona, Stoyancho, and I got into in the mountains, what time we finally made it to the top, or how they searched for us with snowmobiles at 3 a.m. But I’m simply convinced that it was all worth it—down to the very last moment, the very last breath, the very last step—just for the view from the summit that morning, for the sun beating down on the peak, for my smile, and for so, so much of what’s dear to me.
These are the moments that shape you for a lifetime, despite the risk of regretting them or never even having that chance, because you’re young and reckless. Riding a motorcycle without a helmet just to be with him, and the whole group heading up to Kopito or Kambanite in the evening—you all know why—for the view of Sofia, of course.
Love is like lying in the middle of Tsarigradsko Shose.
I believe that I made the most of that particular moment, because I had everything anyone could ever dream of.
To wake up on the beach in a sleeping bag, with your baby lying asleep next to you, to never tire of wandering through the bars of Smokinya, despite the heat and the hangover, walking side by side on your journey, dreaming freely under the stars, looking in the same direction, making time stand still.
Thousands of memories surface in my mind from the sea of adventures—the thousands of moments I’ll keep to myself now because they’re special. I love life precisely because of these shared moments of exhilaration, rebellion, youth, and freedom—and the many beautiful sunrises and sunsets filled with hope for the future or for the next adventure.
Right now, I’m listening to WOSH MC’s album “ANIMAL,” which came out exactly 10 years ago, and I’m feeling a little nostalgic because I know life will never be the same after 100 Kila, Krisco, and Geri Nikol. People will never be the same.
But what's more important is that I've lived that crazy, crazy life at breakneck speed—a life of speed, love, and parties to the max—and that I still secretly long for a summer like the one I had in 2009.
Because in the summer of 2009, I was madly in love and wanted nothing more—because the word “love” meant everything to me at that moment.
We were foolish and naive, but we were free spirits. I remember the streets of Sofia, which seemed to me like the streets of Berlin, and I was a little Columbus of the capital. I lived, I explored, I dreamed, I found myself in all sorts of situations, I ran away, and I hid to smoke.
I’m a child of the ’90s, and I’m so happy that I was part of the transition, part of a time of change, because I wasn’t one of the most well-behaved girls—I even ran away from home once, and it was really hard on my parents because they didn’t know my boyfriend. I made mistakes, I said silly things, but I was truly happy because I believed in freedom as the purest form of religion.
We were absurd, we were crazy, we were rebels, but truly pure at heart, because we were capable of true love.
