Author: Liljumper

Oh Dorothy, how right you are.

No matter how much I adjust, there just is no place like home. The imitation of the holidays, the new friends, the new family traditions, it is never and will never be like home.

Home is familiar, it’s warm, it’s….home. There is no other way of putting it.

I’m not saying everything else is rubbish, but I am just saying, there isn’t a place like home.

And maybe that’s an important distinction. I didn’t leave home to try to make home. I left home to have new experiences and make a different kind of home. Pining for what I left behind, doesn’t do anything necessarily constructive. It’s an emotion I have, that is okay, but it doesn’t, shouldn’t, because there will never be any replacement. There will be no place like home.

It’s hard to maintain a balance between wanting it to be like home, and making new things, between nostalgia and creation. But it’s something that is on my mind during this holiday season.

Sometimes I think I have it all down, that I’m all good and adjusted.

Then I turn the corner and I run right into a wall. And I’m reminded of how it’s such a long tiresome process sometimes. It’s something I always do, an adaptation I do each day. It doesn’t get done, it gets adjusted to.

So that’s a bit complex, but what I mean is I get adjusted to being adjusted. Not necessarily the individual action I am adjusting to, but the adjusting process. And it’s a process.

So much so. It’s something each day I think, okay, I will conquer this day and the things that are different, I will take in strides, and it will be okay.

The days when I just want to stay here where things are comfortable, when I feel like sensory overload, I will get past them.

It’s hard. It’s not perfect. And I’m definitely not done.

But, it’s a process. And so I keep on going.

(what choice did I have anyway?)

These are the best. I love them. Let the season begin! One is chocolate, duh and the other is tea, of course. A tea advent calender is the best thing ever. It has not been so fruitful yet, punny, but I have hope!

I have a fear of spiders.

I have a fear of eating them in my sleep, of them crawling in my ears, everything. The bigger they are the worse it is. I don’t actually know why I wanted to do this post, but I had an idea one day, and here we are.

I was thinking about how to control or conquer my fear.

Fear is what keeps us alive to a degree. If we aren’t afraid of jumping, we jump, if we aren’t afraid of the consequences we push the boundaries. Fear keeps us safe? To an extent, I think so. I am afraid of getting burned, so I don’t put my hands near open flames.

But what purpose does this spider fear serve?

Maybe it keeps me away from poisonous spiders, but I don’t even know what those are, just the image of them on my screen is terrifying.

It reminds me of a show I used to watch on tv when I was younger, fear factor. I wonder if that kind of experience would conquer my fear….or scar me forever. It could induce one of those terror states and I don’t know how I’d get out of it. Sometimes when I have intense dreams of spiders, I can’t go back to sleep afterwards, it’s just an intense adrenaline fear experience.

Am I less of a person for being so afraid of such tiny, sometimes, things? I guess it makes me human, but it also is scary.

What do I do now with my fear I guess…do I try to conquer it, manage it, or just leave it?

This has been my favorite part of Germany/Austria that I have experienced in the last two years. I love advent calenders, here they’re so big and everyone has them. From make up companies, to chocolate, to tea!

I’m a big fan of them, I love getting something small everyday to count down the days until Christmas.

I have a Lindt Dark Chocolate Truffle one and a Tea Advent Calender, because I kind of love tea.

There’s just something so lovely about them. Maybe I just like gifts, who knows?

I had a thought last night about how I was just putting my inner thoughts and life out there. I’ve documented parts of my life and my deeper thoughts. Of course I leave some for myself and I chew them over in my own head. But a lot of them, I put here.

I share them with my friends and family in other places…and the internet.

At first I was really kinda freaked out about it, but that’s what people do now. The internet was created to shorten the distance between people and allow them to communicate and share. And people do it all the time, they’re across platforms, creating videos, having personas.

Maybe that’s just where our society is headed, to our internet presence. Where distances get bigger, and the only way to solve them is for us to be on the internet.

I don’t know if I like the idea, but it seems that is where it’s going.

I learned in class that we learn the most about ourselves and our own culture when we travel. When we are presented with the unfamiliar, the strange, the new, we learn about what we think are the familiar. When we get back from the trip, the first things we want to do, usually, is to feel at home, comfortable. How best to do that? With something to eat/drink that’s familiar. For me,  a cup of tea? The ways in which our culture and food are connected are integral. And I feel it ever more so now, today.

Thanksgiving. It has never meant a whole lot to me. It always meant driving, and family, and food. It was always pleasant, but it was never something that made my heart quicken. It was a day, marked with a feast, but never something terribly emotional. Until now, of course when I’m away.

You always yearn for what you don’t have.

I yearn for Thanksgiving dinners, turkeys, preparing food, family.

This is my first year on my own without anyone to prepare food. Last year in Vienna, they had a meal for us all since we were all in the same boat. But now, entirely alone.

And boy do I feel it.

So in an attempt to make it feel a bit like home, I shall be doing all the cooking myself.

I have been dealing with a lot of questions, such as “why not wrap the meat in bacon?” “does it really have to be a whole bird?”.

In an uphill battle, futile as it may be, today will feel as close to home as it can.

You can never truly imitate the real thing, and in trying to do so, maybe you miss the real thing. But I will try.

My nostalgia is kicking in, and I want to try to make it feel as close as possible.

I am about to embark on a three day marathon of cooking, preparing, and hosting. I have my first solo Thanksgiving tonight, a potluck with my fellow masters students, and another Saturday.

Wish me luck. I will need it.

Here’s to the Thanksgiving spirit

I was watching a Sex in the City episode the other day and this hit me.

First off, why? In high school most of my friends had seen this show and loved it and I wondered why. So I have been giving it a shot. All six seasons, some episodes I’m left with a huh? or why? and my head in my hands, but some other times it rings true.

Anyway, Carrie, the protagonist, has this one relationship with Mr. Big that is toxic. She knows he can’t give her what she wants, a future, but she goes back, even has an affair with him and hurts people. It’s something she can’t help doing. He’s toxic, but so alluring to her. She knows she shouldn’t, but always goes down the rabbit hole. And at first I wanted to shout and kick, I was so upset. I said why are you so stupid? he won’t change, you won’t get what you want.

And then that’s when I realized I was shouting at my past self.

You get these flashes of memory and deja vu. The memories rush by you and you wonder, how could I have been so stupid? But I realized that I was not so much upset with her, but with my old self.

And maybe that’s why this show is so popular.

But it’s that toxic relationship that you know is poisoning you, but you can’t quite shake. Your friends tell you, you know, but you go back. It almost seems like you just want the pain. Things seem good, but it never works. They make themselves available when they want it, it’s emotionally manipulative, and it’s so unhealthy.

And I’ve most definitely been there.

And it made me so happy to know that I’m not anymore.

So while I had my little, you were so stupid in the past, now I get my, but now you’re even better and happier. You got out, after a long time, you picked yourself up, and you got happy.

This is my pat on the back.

I learn to live with the mistakes I’ve made, knowing I’m wiser now. And, probably, won’t make the same ones again.

I was thinking recently about betrayal because of a novel I read. It’s a pretty long description, so I’ll jut state what you need to know.

There’s a bunch of kids, teens, in an experiment to save the post-apocalyptic world. Because of this, there are lots of variables and you can’t really trust what you experience.

One of the main actions in this novel is to make the main protagonist feel betrayed by the one he loves. It ends up just being something they had to do, although can we really trust what everyone says? It was to save his life, but he can’t ever get rid of it. They never remain the same, and it effectively ends their relationship.

And it made me so sad.

Because for the readers, it’s reminiscent of that first betrayal we all felt. It hits us in our guts and makes us remember. Feeling like things were okay and then that stab that makes us forever changed.

It makes us wary, it damages us, it changes us. The scars of it are there forever and it seems to always cut the deepest.

Because it teaches us the world is dangerous, and people, especially those we know intimately through friendship or love, have the potential to hurt us the most. It reminds us that letting someone in, invites the danger in too. There is always the possibility of hurt. It teaches us that maybe we shouldn’t trust the world, and certainly not people.

The world becomes less shiny. People become less interesting, you become more guarded.

Of course only speaking from experience.

But it teaches us to be wary, we don’t walk around with innocent trust because we’re taught not to. And I don’t think we ever go back.

We just move forward the next day and try to live the best we can.

It hurts and it will for a long time, but there’s nothing else to do. Revenge doesn’t solve it and it’s impossible to go back. You can’t remain, and so you must go.

It remains a scar. It’s a crack in the way we see the world. But it’s something we all live with.