second part

“And as the world scrolls and swipes through curated perfection, I wonder if there’s still a place for stories that carry the scent of ashes and the laughter of rebirth. Maybe that’s the real adventure now; showing up, unfiltered, in a world of filters.“

So my story doesn’t end there. It simply moults, feathers scatter and laughter echoes through the digital ether. I sit here, a self-confessed rarity: Dutch by passport but not by a stereotype; aristocratically raised but always drawn to the wild margins where life is less predictable and infinitely more interesting.

It’s strange to look back and realise how many worlds I’ve inhabited. I was the blond girl in the hat, immune to the lure of easy money and the even easier boys, earning the respect of Swiss banker’s sons and the curiosity of men who lived by stealth Sui juris, lore and loyalty.

I watched fragile, disciplined survivors (Russian ballerinas) transform their bodies in ways that horrified my romantic sensibilities, yet I understood: for them, adaptation was not vanity but necessity.

I learned the difference between a crowbar and a professional locksmith tool not from a textbook but from my Platonic Paramour show and tell over dinner. I saw the inside of chop shops and the downside of police raids, and I learned that the line between “bad man” and “good man” is mostly a matter of who gets to write the story.

There were nights of shoarma and laughter and mornings of existential reckoning. There were moments when I was the observer and others when I was the accomplice—never quite belonging, always a little bit apart, the phoenix in the ashes, the romantic in a world of pragmatists and survivors.

And now, in a world where stories are shared with the click of a button, I find myself hesitating at the threshold. Social media buttons—those tiny, colourful gateways to everywhere—are as foreign to me as the first lockpick was to my Belgian-Italian friend.

I know I’ll have to make their acquaintance someday, to let my stories fly beyond the safety of memory and into the wilds of the internet.

But for now, I laugh. I cry. I remember. I am, after all, the personification of a phoenix—burning, laughing, rising, and always, always curious about what comes next.

And when I’m ready to press those buttons, I’ll do it with the same spirit that’s carried me through every ridiculous, beautiful, tragicomic adventure so far: head held high, hat on, and no trace of plastic (read Botox) in sight.

May Harmony find you,

Irena Phaedra

P.S.“Of course, the phoenix’s journey is never really finished. There are still South London gangsters and in-laws smouldering in the background, but those, dear reader, are tales for another day.”