We'll always have our Rio

How do I ever begin writing this? How do you even begin saying goodbye to the only woman that has ever truly loved you? How can you reduce in a few words something that –from what very few people around me knew– might have looked tame or irrelevant or even exaggerated, but deep inside my soul... it has been among the most important things that have happened in my life?

It was June 20, 2013, when someone managing the account for a fan page of a Bond girl actress asked me "How did I look like?" and I replied that my profile pic was my actual pic. She wasn't trying to "hit on me", but we soon did hit on each other. And my life changed forever. There were lots of comings and goings. Doubts. Mutual insecurities. But something inside my heart told me she was the one. And every time I looked around me, not only my heart but my head told me that if I didn't meet this girl, I would regret it forever. 

Walking on the streets of Buenos Aires at night, more precisely on a night of November 2014, while talking to her on the phone, I made the decision: "I'm going to watch Bond 24 with you". My original plan was aiming for a trip to London in November 2015 to watch what it eventually was titled SPECTRE and maybe even attend the premiere. But for once in my life, there was something more important than James Bond. The destination changed from London to Rio de Janeiro quickly. And I don't regret it. Nor I ever will.

During the first fifteen days of November 2015, I have experienced the most beautiful days in my life since my golden childhood in 1998. We ate a delicious dish at the Bar do Arnaudo in Santa Teresa, we went to the Sugarloaf, and she gave me a lot of beautiful things she got me since we first started talking: the first Blu-ray movies I owned, a Brazilian magazine covering the release of SPECTRE and the autographs she had been collecting me for months: Naomie Harris, Léa Seydoux, Rosamund Pike, Gemma Arterton and Eva Green. She also gave me the GoldenEye Swatch released in 2002 in a set to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Bond films. 

That wasn't all. I kept my promise and we went to watch SPECTRE days later. She was ill on November 5, so I waited for three days. You know this has to be big if I don't go to watch a Bond film on its release day. And let me tell you watching this movie and then walking along the streets of Rio was one of the few days my heart smiled in my life.

I know this article might sound a little bit confusing and perhaps banal. I'm not thinking straight and I want to vent but I don't want to vent too much, because there are things that shall better stay in my heart. I'm just driving in circles to say that I recieved an email today from her usual account. It wasn't in English, the language we shared. It was in Portuguese. And it wasn't written by her. It was her mother. To tell me the Little Lady made her "last trip with no return" two days ago. She had been battling a harsh illness for a year or so and sadly my finances were so pitiful that I couldn't even make a short trip in this time. We still stayed in touch, she knew about my books and we told each other very beautiful things, I even managed to send her flowers to the hospital with a beautiful message twice. But a trip was out of the question and particularly now with all this quarantine situation.

If God can read what I'm writing, I ask you, my Lord, please give me the chance to bid a proper farewell to her. Make us meet again in a dream. Transport my soul and her soul for a couple of hours to room 304 of that Augustus Paysandu hotel and let us have another kiss. Let me kiss her goodbye, at least in a dream. And if you can read what I'm writing, my darling one, I want to remind you that I'll love you forever. And when I say forever, I really mean forever.

Nothing more to say here.
I'll say it when we meet in my dreams.

We'll always have our Rio.
Je t'aime de tout mon coeur.