When Lina turned forty, she threw herself a funeral.
Not the tragic kind—with sobs and lilies—but a proper burial for all the versions of her that had been politely dying for years. She wrote their eulogies on napkins: Lina Who Always Said Yes, Lina Who Waited For Permission, Lina Who Thought “Maybe Later.” She placed them in a shoebox, marched to the dunes behind her seaside apartment, and buried them beside a stubborn patch of sea lavender.
Then she bought a red bicycle.
She hadn’t ridden one since she was twelve, but that didn’t matter. She wobbled through the streets of The Hague like a flaming comet in motion—careful, then laughing, then unstoppable.
At forty, Lina started painting. She painted storm clouds that looked like ex-lovers, and breakfast tables that looked like new beginnings. She painted her own face once, and realized it wasn’t tired—it was becoming.
By forty-one, her small flat smelled of turpentine and freedom. By forty-two, her laugh startled strangers into smiling.
And one evening, cycling home through the rain, soaked and radiant, she thought—
Maybe life didn’t begin at birth, or at love, or at marriage.
Maybe it began every time she decided it would.
And tonight, it began again.