Hi, I'm Àgueda

My name is Àgueda, with an open accent on the A. An unusual word, stressed where you don't expect it and full of force, that has kept me company all my life. I've always thought my name, on its own, already says a lot about me.

I'm one of those people who believes everything can be fixed with a smile; one of those who walks into a room and says hello even without knowing a soul; one of those who picks up a pen and has to draw and scribble on everything. I need music in my day to day — I can't do anything without "my soundtrack" playing underneath. I sing in the shower and while I'm drying my hair; the noise of the hairdryer inspires me. I'm one of those who dances to the last song with a smile on her face however much her feet hurt. I love strawberries and red sweets; I'm one of those who expresses herself better in writing than out loud. I'm one of those who laughs loudly and means it.

I'm one of those who values the small details, the gestures nobody names, the looks that recognise each other without words. One of those who finds beauty in what others walk past: a chair placed just right, a flower set down as if by chance, a light coming through the window at exactly the right hour.

I'm one of those who could live on watching videos of little animals on the internet and welling up at them; one of those who needs everything organised but who also loves surprises (although I'm hard to surprise, because I'm a great detective — I grew up reading and watching Sherlock Holmes, Detective Conan and Agatha Christie). I'm outrageously geeky: give me a Harry Potter, Star Wars, Marvel or DC film and I'm like a little girl in new shoes.

Don't go thinking I only like geeky things — I'm also a hopeless romantic. Give me tissues, Moulin Rouge, Sweet November, The Vow...

I like reminding the people I love that I love them, whether by saying it or by showing it. And for a while now there's been a small person I say it to every day — I'm a mother, and everything I thought I knew about loving has been rewritten. And it's even more beautiful. I'm honest — too honest, sometimes. When I'm having a bad day I clean and reorganise drawers compulsively; and at the same time I can live in absolute chaos. When I'm well, though, I could take on the whole world.

I like sincere love. The love of people who look at each other and still recognise what they see. The kind that doesn't need explaining. The kind that's hard to name. I adore everything that love carries with it — the vulnerability, the promise, the everyday gesture that makes no noise. I think friendships are the real family, because they're the one you choose. I can't bear to see an animal suffer — and I'm one of those who brings every lost little creature home. I'm one of those who daydreams; one of those who goes everywhere with a diary and alarms for everything; one of those who walks down the street with music on convinced everyone else can hear it.

I'm one of those who cries at practically every wedding. The godmother welling up, the vows (which I've often already read!), the brother's or the best friend's speech... I get away with very few of them. Tissues are part of my emergency kit.

And I'm one of those who believes the best weddings are the ones that speak about the people living them. Weddings like no other. Weddings that speak about the two of you, not about the one you saw the week before. Weddings that give you memories, not photographs.

I'm all of this and much more.
And mixing it all together — everything that makes me who and how I am — is what creates the Inefable. My inefable.