.SOMETIMES RAW.

It has been years since I left my previous job, moved to Canada, decided to study and to raise my son. I wrote a lot about all these transitions that were sometimes rather tough than easy while encouraging others to follow suit. I don’t want to give advice, because I don’t know what I am doing 100%. I simply let you know what worked for me and what I learned from certain situations and hard curveballs life threw at me. All these things I did made total sense to me at the time. I followed my dreams and there is nothing wrong with that.

Sometimes I didn’t think things through all the way and then spent months pondering about why I did it. Was it a calling? Am I easily convincible? Was it the proverbial greener grass? Maybe I was too young? In hindsight, it does not matter. I finally mustered up the courage to do it and felt the wind in my hair and the swoop in my stomach which was my reality – this is where I needed to be. As I now skip through the streets of Vienna, while a bit of fear and thrill radiating off my skin, I felt like the leaping proof of a concept and I want others to feel it, too. Do what feels good. Go for it. I can see now that, beyond feeling fulfilled by my new life, I felt validated for my years of wanting exactly this life. It wasn’t until recently that I started pondering the difference. How would I have felt had it all gone wrong?

Every so often, the details of the last couple of months pass through me like a ghost. The beam of sunlight that settles in my heart when thinking about the good times while missing someone very special. The last hug, the warmth. The meditative train ride back “home” leaving a warm, familiar smell of my childhood home, back with my parents. How could it be that, although everything has changed, my mood is still the same? As the days move on since I left and stretch into the weekend, my perception of it all is still evolving. Why did I leave, really? What exactly did I leave behind? Was leaving brave? Fearful? Did it make sense? Honorable? Arbitrary? Should I have stayed? I may have followed my dreams and happiness, but I left another kind of dream, too. Maybe dreams can be vast and fickle like that. Maybe I can be, too. Maybe my dream back home will continue.

When I arrived in Germany this summer, it occurred to me that, despite uprooting my life in pursuit of more and finding it, too, I am not sure the emotional tenor of my life has changed all that much. These days, hard days and incredible days still punctuated the ones that transpire as expected; eagerness and trepidation still inform my perception of the future. Moments of insanity and insecurity still mix with feelings of self-assuredness. In a psychology magazine, I recently read the term “hedonic treadmill” which is coined by two psychologists in the 70s and refers to “the observed tendency of humans to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness despite major positive or negative events or life changes.” In short, we adapt, regardless of the circumstances. Some research theorizes that our neurochemical processes actually prevent us from experiencing sustained positive or negative emotions at all. So, you can hide, stay, run, leap, cry, but you will still just be you.

My question then is: If not sustained happiness, what are all of us actually pursuing? Also, what is happiness but this is a different essay. If the details of our lives can drastically change without changing us, how do we identify what we truly want? All this lends new depth to an expression I love: Wherever you go, there you are. You can hide, stay, run, leap, cry, but you will still just be you: stupid jokes, worrying, impatience and all.

We know that our society idolizes the hustle for money, recognition, fame, dreams, wellness, and whatnot but we also have evidence in spades that none of these things in excess solve the happiness equation, right? The ones who seemingly have it all still fuck up, oversleep, cheat, get divorced, use drugs, relapse, are insecure while trying to mask it with expensive clothes and tons of makeup, feel lost, and choose wrong while acting cranky and bitchy. All this is just part of human existence. Many amass wealth and recognition because of capitalist ideas that are sold to them about the value of risking everything and going after what they really want. I don’t regret for one second that I followed my dreams and I have gratitude for the version of me that is not afraid to take a leap. I am also privileged that I had the resources to seek out a sense of fulfillment and purpose and of course the luck to find it all. At the same time, I am increasingly aware that there was plenty about my life before this step that made me feel grateful, too. People I met, the connections I made and of course my family who is always behind me. I know I could have found a sense of fulfillment and purpose in Germany, too. Just another kind. But I know that I will be connected with the people who matter no matter what. So, you want advice about leaving cities, careers, or relationships that don’t feel right? Simply listen to your gut feelings and become more open to the idea that conception can shift without seismic uprooting. That big life changes don’t always change us, and that more than anything else, we will always be ourselves. I think it is worth asking yourself: What makes you happiest as you are now? Because no matter where you go, that will most likely never change. Home is where your heart is anyway.

1. Scene 1: (Married couple: A man and woman on a road trip to New York to take care of important paperwork/documents). It is very early in the morning. Everything seems fine.
2. They laugh. She falls asleep for an hour or two. She wakes up when he pulls over to get coffee. (A little break but he does not seem tired at all).
3. (They arrive in New York. She gets out of the car and walks to the office. He tries to find parking in the area).
4. She receives messages on her phone while walking to the office. She doesn’t know the person who sent the messages but it is disturbing nonetheless. “Your husband is having an affair with my wife”, she reads. She reads it over and over and feels that a huge hole opens in front of her – ready to swallow her up. She falls into this depth. It is dark, cold and painful.
5. “Who is she?”, she asks.
6. “Nothing is wrong”, he says and “this woman is just a colleague; a friend. Nothing more. The colleague needs help dealing with issues and he, of course, gives his advice. It is a war zone, after all. There is a lot of stress. Her husband is a psychopath”.
7. The man denies everything, and she cries out, ” Why didn’t you tell me?” “It means nothing because nothing happened”, he says. (Long silence)
8. They drive back. Ahead of them: an (at least) eight-hour drive (800+km) next to each other (trapped) in the car. (No escape, just silence). She stares out of the window for the first hour. Speechless.
9. (Neither of them is happy but nobody wants to leave. So they continue and call it love. )
10. She digs one more time through her bag to find her phone,
11. to gather information and missing links,
12. to check messages and emails,
13. to arrange everything in a huge pile and looks for her red lipstick (she needs red lipstick to make herself happy)
14. (She applies the lipstick.)
15. She then finally just stares blankly at all this mess her life has become. In one second (with one message) everything changes.
16. Outside: It looks sad, it is fall. November.
17. Back at “home”: She considers going to bed, to forget the whole thing. Maybe it is all just a bad dream?
18. His suggestion of what to do next, not a perfect one, but…. He suggests weird things and says them out loud while peace tries to spread out in her head. She does not want to listen to him anymore.
19. Her complaint, “We cannot live like this. I don’t want to live like this. How do you think this can be even possible….?”
20. (Change of scene. Both sit in the kitchen, brooding angrily. Trust is broken. There is no way back, she thinks. Maybe there would be, but he chooses to go on a Safari instead. “Alone”, to relax because he works in a war zone)
21. She knows what will happen next. Deep inside. At this point, there is no return. She is in charge. He won’t be any longer. Enough is enough.
22. (First change of scene: Months passed and no change but fighting and arguing). [Possibly insert a scene: Two people typing emails, one looking sad, the other one is denying] 😉
23. (Second change of scene: She walks to the car and drives to the lawyer’s office)
24. For her to eventually lean over the counter and
25. to take the stack of papers out of her purse,
26. to retrieve a paper fallen to the ground, to catch the other ones slipping.
27. The length of her explanation, her supplication,
28. and meanwhile (change of scene) he is furious. He does not want the change.
29. (A lawyer starts to work on the application- typing things, taking notes). She leaves the lawyer’s office and walks back to the car.
30. (At this point: heavy snowfall)
31. She glances back, to see the lawyer’s office entrance again. She sees her footprints in the snow while closing her warm winter jacket. She feels good and is proud that she had the strength to take this step.
32. (At home: Holds her marriage certificate in hand and thinks: What is she going to do now? This meaningless piece of paper. It means nothing after all)
33. The emergence of a slight headache. So much stress. Barely any sleep.
34. The emergence of thoughts in her mind, the suppression of it, its reemergence
35. The contemplation: She was too blind to see. It is better this way.
36. In emails, he recites a list, another list, of other things she has done to him in all those years. The punch lines. She does not listen any longer.
37. (Change of scene/Drive to the airport): In the car, she looks out of the window: A hawk flies overhead. Is he following their car? Woods everywhere, low red sky. Sunset. The evening then night)
38. (At the airport: Four blinks from him, seven from her [watery eyes). One last hug. He said, “I am sorry!” (Neither did she feel anything anymore nor did she say anything back but she hugged him goodbye. She walked back to the car without turning back.)
39. (Change of scene: After the drop-off): She wiped away one last tear. Then she sees a little boy next to a woman who both want to cross the street. The woman looks sad but the boy seems happy and jumps up and down. “It is not that bad, mommy,” he said while grabbing her hand.
40. The little boy looks at the woman and smiles.
41. At this point, she knows she will be fine.

My son asked me the other day, “Mommy, when will I be a grown-up?” “Very soon, my love because time flies,” I responded. This small conversation made me think. Maybe the issue was that there is a direction. Up. One cannot simply grow, one must grow up. Along with pencil notches on a door frame and candles on a cake, your ferocity, wisdom, and velocity must increase as you age.

Anyone who has reached adulthood knows that growth does not progress like a ticking clock. It usually means horrible missteps and innocence lost, betrayal, disappointment and broken zippers. It moves backward, inwards, sideways, finding new ways to humble us. Doesn’t growth most often feel only good in hindsight? Like running a marathon through the five stages of grief. Sometimes it doubles back on itself many times before it emerges as something remotely useful. Then, of course, we may forget what it taught us and repeat the same mistakes. Move back home, get lost, find ourselves again, get lost again, meet new people, get lost again, but be better for it. Ad infinitum.

We all know this chart and intellectuality it entails, right?

But it is different from knowing it in our bones. And aligning our senses of self to the inalienable truth that progress often means making a huge, disastrous mess first. #storyofmylife. Let’s dive into the complicated pool of human progress a bit: Growing up. Can you grow down? Laterally? Literally? In relationship and partner choices, I know of at least one example for sure. Can you regress and then grow as a direct result of that regression? Or can you grow in a bad way? In the wrong way? Can you grow by learning, and then grow again by unlearning what you learned the first time?

I told my son the other day that I don’t want to sound like a deflated balloon, but adulthood is exhausting. He just looked at me and proudly told me that he washed my new sweater in the little pond so I don’t have to wash it anymore. Now that I am here on this earth for quite some time as a fully formed adult who subscribes to The New Yorker, reads the Süddeutsche Zeitung and moves around to figure out where the best place to live is one might think I have it all figured out.

These days, life is awesome but a couple of weeks ago it was rather tedious and my happiness tended to look a lot more like contentment rather than non-stop joy. It is a constant up and down but this is okay. I could throw caution to the wind and hop on the hedonistic hamster-wheel of chasing perpetual youth, but honestly, that sounds exhausting, kind of expensive and I rather spend my afternoon in a hammock reading a good book to find perpetual inner peace. So in the interest of gratitude and thoughtful living and what have you, I am trying not to take adulthood for granted and will share a handful of things that make me feel blissful, like a full-on adult. These are little moments where life turned out exactly as I once thought it would.

Balancing groceries on my hip as I get my mail out of the mailbox. It is just something about this balancing act that is life just feels so satisfying. Little victories. And never walk twice.

Eating Chinese food straight from the container.

When I lived in New York City, eating Lo Mein out of a paper container felt like the height of working woman sophistication to me. There was this certain grace of giving myself not even a plate feels which felt like an indulgence. There is of course no moral value one way or another on eating Chinese take out, but something about the image of a woman alone on her couch, watching crap TV, eating takeout feels to me like a deep exhalation.

Standing in the aisle of a drug store comparing two toilet cleaners. Nothing says I have my shit together quite like taking my time to form opinions on toilet bowl cleaners.

Making chicken soup (any other soup) from scratch. Or actually cooking anything at home because it tastes so much better.

Unceremoniously stop jogging when I have had enough and to simply walk home. It is totally fine. No judgments. Not even the guy you just passed who challenged himself to squat deeper than he did the week before. He also trains for the Iron Man. I will do my thing. I used to train harder, run faster but in the long-run, all this nonsense did nothing for me but gave me pain.

Safety. If I knew what safety looked like, I would have spent less time falling into arms that were not. I know now. The key: Love yourself first. Unconditionally.

Chill in a hammock for a couple of hours and read. You are your own soulmate. Don’t mistake salt for sugar. If he wants to be with you, he will. It is that simple.