.SOMETIMES RAW.

“Germans are really awesome,” my friend told me the other day. Are we? Being German in Canada means, I, of course, have my “homesick-store” where I can get German cookies, sausages, sauerkraut and Christmas Stollen and Glühwein in the winter. I go to this store at least once a month (conveniently close to my school!) to get a warm “Leberkäsbrötchen” for lunch since one can only stress-eat Tim Horton’s breakfast sandwiches for so long.

When I tell people I am from Germany, the first reaction usually is: WOW, OKTOBERFEST! Well, honestly, having lived in Munich for a couple of years, this is really what many Germans occupy themselves with for the last weeks in September. It seems like everybody loves Oktoberfest. Lederhosen, Dirndls, cuckoo clocks, greasy sausages, sauerkraut and of course hoisting around one-liter Steins of extra strong brewski while rocking back and forth to Schlager. 

Outside of Munich, it’s a different story. Fun fact: Oktoberfest originally was a public feast honoring the marriage of the Crown Prince Ludwig to Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen in 1810. I mean, until pretty recently, Germany was a tangled network of Electorates and even today, every region has its own dialect and weird festivals and culture. Does this all sound like “beer” to you? 

In Canada, a country at least about 60 times the size of Germany, many people think that Germany seems synonymous with Bavaria/Beer/Oktoberfest and giant steins of Bier. Germany is also pretzels (yum!), Tracht (a traditional German dress which is, thanks to the Führer’s affection for “traditional things” always seems to carry a bit of unintentional or intentional (if you are a member of the AfD) Nazism.

Some German words and traditions

Have you ever heard the word Schadenfreude? (My dad’s favorite!) You know this feeling when the elevator door closes just before your evil coworker can step in? Or seeing a parking ticket on a Porsche? There is a word for this mix of joy and malice and Germans invented it. Schadenfreude means deriving pleasure from others’ misfortune. A good word to know. Here are some more: 

1. 1. Fernweh: The opposite of homesickness. You have this feeling of desiring a place yo have never been to. 
   2. Wanderlust: Similar to Fernweh. To see new places and not stay in one place. Literally the desire to wander around. 
   3. Zeitgeist: It describes the prevalent spirit of an era. 
   4. Angst: Use this word anytime when you worry, have anxiety or are scared. German Angst! 
   5. Zweisamkeit: Being together. A feeling of closeness. Zwei means two (people) and is the opposite of Einsamkeit (loneliness). 
   6. Luftkuss: You blow a kiss through the air. Joel and I do this every morning when I drop him off at school. We then pretend that we catch the kiss with one hand, put it in our mouths and swallow it. 
   7. Freudentränen: Tears of joy! 
   8. Frühlingsgefühle: This sounds weird but is actually just a word to describe a feeling of excitement for nice weather or literally when spring is around the corner. 
   9. Verzehren: This can describe the process of literal eating but it can also mean that one desires someone so much you almost want to eat them. 😉 
   10. Geborgenheit: This word is actually almost impossible to translate. It is an intensely emotional moment like when someone returns home after a long time and being held by family members for example. Like comfort but more! It basically means to feel intensely in the moment and exist. 
   11. Augenblick: Warte einen Augenblick! (Wait a second). A super short moment, a blink of an eye. 

Many times I just receive blank stares or weird looks when I mention certain German traditions. For example a few weeks ago, I told a friend that children in Germany receive a huge paper cone (Zuckertüte, literally: cone of sugar) full of enough candy to diabeticize their entire class on their first day of preschool. It’s a thing. It’s a German tradition. My friend replied that she knows a German word. “It’s Schnitzelbank,” (SHNIT-sul-BONK) she said. “What the f*** is that supposed to be, “I replied. She said, “Well, I cannot tell the difference between Schiller’s and Goethe’s skull but I know that this is a word in German.” Well, I never heard of it but here is her memory of Schnitzelbank:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=19&v=CIk4sC8ASS0

So off I went thinking about Schnitzelbank (traditional song here) and googled it immediately. I thought the song was schön (nice). To be fair here, the ö- Umlaut is pretty hard to approximate in English phonetics, just try to say SCHOOOOOON instead of SHANE. Joel and I teach my friend some German here and there but honestly, I have to admit, learning German is not easy at all. I tried to make it clear that Schnitzelbank is feminine so you have to add the article “die” in German. Articles in English are so easy in comparison; everything is just the. He tries to speak German but some things don’t sound richtig. But it does not matter. We keep practicing since it is fun. Beer he understands. And Stein. Prost! 

Letting go is healing but it is not always easy. A support network is important and I am glad to have people in my life who care, listen and help. Life is a constant flux and change. We can try to resist change but in the end, life happens. I would have loved to be in a different place many times but life has its way and many things that happen are and were out of my control. So what can be done? I can move forward to the best of my ability. I asked my friend if we are really moving forward when we are still holding on to the past. This question led to hours and hours of discussions. 

What happened, happened. We cannot turn back time. Knowing that everything changes is a positive thing in my eyes. It means that we are never permanently fixed and we have the option to either walk toward greater openness and light or to negativity and resentment. We truly have the ability to transform our body and mind to any higher or more developed state of existence. Whatever we choose it to be. I just have to observe myself and get to know who I am instead of continuously wondering why certain things happen to me over and over again. I thought many times that I am over X, Y, and Z or that I learned from previous “mistakes”, yet it seems that out of the blue I get hit/hurt again. This is a good indication that more inner work still needs to be done. 

So, I have been asking myself what life is trying to tell me. I know I am responsible for myself and that life can feel and be very effortful once I recognize that the way I was living for the last couple of years did not exactly serve me but I never asked myself what needed to change. Some sort of quasi-review of what happened and no conversation with my partner left me trustfully hoping for the best, sort of like “this too shall pass, things will sort themselves out eventually”. There was also a lot of negative controlling involved that wore me down and left me no room to reflect and connect with myself. 

My friend then asked me, “Do you know yourself?” Simple answer: A bit, I reckon. While we drank coffee and spoke I realized that everything still is very unsettling and the healing process is even daunting to think what lies ahead of me. Life throws new curveballs at me almost on a daily basis, new decisions need to be made and I realize that by entangling myself in certain ego version of who I am or was won’t help me to grow. Building a strong core and stable foundation is important. This entails knowing my heart (damn anatomy class), character strengths and skills, vulnerabilities and weaknesses, fears as well as the threshold of my comfort zone. This simply requires deeper self-reflection and most importantly self-honesty. I want to probe the mysteries of my heart more deeply to “dis-cover” why there were so many uncertainties in previous relationships and these battles to keep what no longer works afloat. 

My friend and I agreed that we just have this humbling ability to see life one brief moment at a time. Of course, there may be patterns but that is no guarantee that we are right. Sometimes there are too many options to choose from. Many people are scared to make the wrong decisions so instead, they stay put knowing that where they are right now is not the best place for them but it sure is familiar and familiar means comfortable to some extent. 

We have the ability to either destroy or build in our minds. We can German-Angst-worry and amplify it into a colossal set of potential problems that may never happen but paralyze me with fear. Mental strength is the key and makes me extraordinary. My friend spoke about some of his fears and it was a proof again that it’s inside, not outside, where we determine if someone is happy, lonely, sad, successful, ashamed, proud, overwhelmed, etc. Again, what happened to me, happened. There are no easy or quick fixes to this shit! I just want my brain to rest at night and stop thinking. In my anatomy class, I learned that our brain never ever sleeps. It works even while our bodies are at rest. Great! It makes connections and tries to further navigate us through this life. Awesomeness, but please, I need some rest. 

I know my mind is the only refuge from the rest of the world and I am not afraid to spend some quality time with myself to analyze certain things. And just because my heart wants something, doesn’t mean it is wise to pursue it. I learned that rational thinking and logic are put on silence when the heart is speaking. The language of our wants rarely focuses on what makes sense, but rather focuses on what needs to be quenched and usually, in hindsight, did not make sense at all. 

We spoke about certain fears that can be used to tell the brain to avoid risk; yet, nothing in life is ever safe, secure and can be controlled. What is it we try to stay safe from? Death, which cannot be avoided but maybe delayed? Failure? Nope, I have been there, many times and it is an essential part of growth I reckon. Suffering? Nope, this is an essential tool for survival. So playing it safe does not really cut it since we have little control. I know I have to stop the why-me-complex and stop ignoring my support network that means well.

Everything and everyone changes constantly. Nothing ever stays the same but letting go of the past in my own way enables me to be energized, clear and ultimately ready to enjoy the present and be ready to welcome the future. I am not afraid to get hurt because it is part of life. I learn from it when my mind is open. What I do not like in my life, I heal and what I already love, I love and enjoy more deeply. <3

An evening well spent, Mr. K.L. 

I experienced love (or so I thought) when I was 16 years old. I had my first boyfriend and realized that I never had a feeling like this before. A feeling of being totally happy and content with the other person. The word for this is apparently love, I thought, so I said it out loud. My boyfriend at that time paused however and let my words hang in the air for a few seconds before he responded, I think I love you, too. He explained to me later that he could not name something like love which is just a 4-letter word to him and he never really experienced or said it to anyone before. For me on the other hand, I thought I knew exactly what this word means since I had this strange new feeling in my chest everytime I thought of him. 

There are so many “firsts” in life. We learn and speak a new language, we start to ride a bike and we sort of know that the initial discomfort we experience is just temporary. Of course, we are expected to fall off that bike and scratch our knees as well as we are expected to destroy the pronunciation of the world “millefeuille”; however, we will figure it out eventually. Whatever seemed impossible at first becomes second nature at some point. This theory applies to a lot of things but it seems it does not so much with being or falling in love. 

What is love anyway? What do we actually mean when we say, I love you? 

Throughout the years I have learned and realized that love is perpetually uncomfortable rather than constantly thrilling. Yet, love is something that may keep me up all night. Love is a weird game of assuming and guessing and is great to misinterpret or to analyze to some insane point. What is a normal relationship? Do there need to be high highs and low lows at points or is it rather smooth sailing instead or this oscillating wave? 

So being in love in high school meant for me being engaged in silly fights, arguments, and betrayals but also with a lot of sobbing into the shoulder of his shirt after we were “good again”. It meant I wanted him to spend time with me all the time. It meant getting a “friendship ring”. It meant using him as a security blanket yet I knew when I joined police academy and moved away a breakup was imminent which also made my chest feel tight. So many changes and we were so young. It felt suffocating and intoxicating at the same time. It was messy, exciting, devastating, uncertain but all this is what love is supposed to be like, right? 

Is love a game? There are periods of time when I patiently waited for a message from my partners but nothing arrived. I thought this meant he is not that into me. If he does not write back after we had sex, it means he does not want to have a serious relationship. If he wants to move in with me too quickly, this means he really loves me because he wants to get to know me. I changed certain boyfriend’s names in my phone to “asshole”, “do not pick up”, “psycho” or a monster emoji. Sometimes, when people asked me if I am still in love with a partner I said, NO, absolutely not and deep inside I thought I just feel nauseated, pathetic, and precarious. So, maybe love is supposed to feel like that? Does this mean I am still in love? It cannot be love because I felt pain. Pain/love, I am not so sure about since I detest the housewife porn 50 Shades of Grey. 

I started dating again. He did not say I love you within the first week or months and I realized how happy this made me feel. Also, I did not have the feeling to say it either. I realized then and there that this label LOVE may just not be real love but just something you say because one is supposed to say it. “Screw love: respect and honesty are what we need”, a very close friend of mine told me tonight and I reckon he made a good point.

It is a great feeling to realize that fighting is not an issue with certain people. That things can be very easy and simple conversations and valuable time spent together is salient (fancy word for important). Cooking together, talking for hours, watching something or reading together is different without putting the love-label on it all but rather just enjoying each other’s company. Just totally and utterly unremarkable things that mean a lot to me. But this is where I am now realizing that love in its steadiest, truest and rewarding form is just simply dull. Since I do not focus and put pressure on love hence there is nothing to overanalyze and nothing to second-guess, to refuel or pursue, to proof which means it is easy and so contrary to popular stereotypes and cinematic tropes. That does not mean it is not exciting but it is something that does not pick me up and drops me but rather buoys me instead. It just is. And it is perfect this way. For me.