Tears for Gala

Place: any exoplanetary system
Mood: Fainting
Song: Cooling * Tori Amos

But I always liked a good storm
I'm always good for a storm

This is cooling
Faster than I can
Hey yes, faster than I can
Hey, this is cooling
This is cooling

What do you do when, out of nowhere, you burst into tears at the office?

I never thought about an answer to that question, save the fact that I barely imagined I’ll ever be faced to that inquiry.

But this week, at the worst timing ever, it did happen.

My dear friend Oskar has always told me if I continue with the way I am working every night until midnight with no weekends off, I’ll eventually explode. And while I refused to admit it, I knew he was somehow saying the truth.

We are currently working on this huge festival of ours, and I am giving it my all. It’s the fifth edition of our Arab Film Festival Ayam Beirut Al Cinema’iya (The Cinema Days of Beirut) which will take place between the 17^th and the 26^th of October 2008. It’s very exciting.

But the amount of pressure is very high. I am dealing with 65 films. Catalogue, press, film traffic, website, program, guests… Even if each of us at the company is putting his heart in the process to ensure its success, I feel that I am dealing with pretty much everyone and so I have to know about every single that is happening in every corner so that I won’t miss out on anything.

And that is making us all stay at the office until very late hours.

Yet my physical pain is not due to this festival but to the fact that since August 11, that’s when my vacations were over, I felt like I was on a train that has no stops. Because in September we had another very successful festival, and so I did not have time to rest ever since then.

And now onto Thursday morning.

I slept at 2:00 AM as every night only to wake up to an enormous uproar coming from the roof of the building at 7:30 AM. I instantly got up there only to know that we have a major issue with the water that has flooded onto the upper floors of the surrounding buildings. As parents were in the mountains, I had to secure everything to stop the flooding and hence cease the flow of the water at home. I had the lamest shower and then headed to the office.

There, no time to breath or raise your finger to ask questions. Chop chop chop, work work work. I had a doctor’s appointment to help me figure out what the hell are those tiny red speckles that have been covering my face since Tuesday. So I left the office at 7:00 PM and went to check my dermatologist. Problems in my face have been a nightmare to me since January, and I have been following several treatments. But this one was very serious as he explained to me. He gave another dosage of antibiotics and gels, a very nice bill and I dashed away. This was the very last thing I was expecting. But it’s my own health, and I cannot mess with it.

Onto the parking, where my car’s engine refused to work. One time, two times, three times and still nothing. So I left my car at the parking and decided to walk to the office.

With this 10 minute walk, I thought about a gazillion of things. And when I arrived to the office, I didn’t even look around. I sat on my desk and the tears started flowing. I barely had the time to hide my face with a tissue, but my boss had instantly noticed. I left the room only to discover that the whole office was present, at 8:30 PM.

I have never been as confused as I was in this moment. I felt I was a star around which were evolving several planets (and that’s not in a good way). Everyone being supportive and all came to me to see what went wrong, and eventually I had this long talk with my boss.

As such a time, I even forgot why I cried. The only thing that mattered was how to deal with it and make it look away, for ever.

I told her it’s not about pressure at the office, but rather pressure in my life. Maybe I’m just too tired.

To deal with that, I bought me a beautiful flower the next morning, after healing my car and my face in their respective pharmacies. I decided to call it Gala, the flower of reborn. I hope She will not fade out. Otherwise I think I would be doomed, for the moment.

Presenting Gala and her different moods (which could be my moods as well...)