Frida,

It wasn’t an affair, or love at first sight. It was mere fascination. Fascination with what you did best, or with one of the many. Words. Flimsy words. Mi Amor, you had me at “Feet, what do I need you for when I have wings to fly?” Beautiful Frida, you must know this, you are loved. Not just by Diego but by me and the others. You might wonder about these “others”. Well, they are the ones who fell for your art. The same ones where you preferred to paint yourself amidst flowers and colours while embracing who you really were. Unibrow and a moustache on a woman? What would they say, she thought. But you walked down that lane left by her terrified, by flaunting your beauty, both inner and outer. You made me realize that it’s okay to not have the perfect eyebrows or a perfect face, because what really is the meaning of perfect? You loved yourself, and that’s how it really should be. Maybe that’s why I look up to you. You defied the odds, making the seemingly impossible possible and showed them all that you weren’t afraid to love. Love, a strange word. You loved your man just like any but more than that, you loved yourself. I’ve never been one of those, I think. My love has always been a shared affair, for my lover and for me. There was a time, I must tell you about, when I hid my freckles and my voice underneath my pile of insecurities to be stored away in the dark. But after discovering these cartons again while looking through my room of insecurities, I feel I must give them a chance at least. Fall in love a little bit more, a little bit of me.

There are some who speak ill about you, I won’t lie. The carefree lifestyle, your turbulent life disturbs them but who is perfect here after all? They say your position as a bearer of equality is outrageous, that your choice of life should be abhorred. It is hard for me to understand why we cannot follow the simple purpose of positive passion or the undying will you had in order to achieve what you wanted, rather than point a finger at complexities like life itself. Wouldn’t it be much simpler then? You were full of contradictions and uncertainties, but that’s who you were. That’s what made me want to have that “little bit of Frida” inside me. You communicated through your art, your speech and your personality, permitting us in that process a peak through into your painful life. A painful life which you lived boldly and bravely, in a very Frida way. To give up and just survive would be an easy life. But to face your fears, your inner demons and Yourself, that’s when you know that you have done much more than surviving. I have never thanked you Frida, for teaching me this. To stand up for oneself, to embrace the “unconventional” and to fall in love, no matter how stupid or nonsensical it may seem, I learned from you. Thank You, Frida.

It started as fascination, at first and in no time turned into admiration. And now, as the wave of time goes by, this admiration, my word to you Frida, will amplify. “I think that little by little I’ll be able to solve my problems and survive”, you said. I hope to do the same.

Farewell, for now.

Your admirer