Liljumper’s Adventures

As I was talking to my mom last night, I had a weird revelation.

I feel isolated and somewhat sad here recently.

I feel a multitude of feelings regarding that sentence, so much feels. So how do I feel? I feel a bit guilty, sad, lonely, and a bit stagnant. I know I’m just in the bottom of a rut now, but it still is the bottom (or maybe just the descent? although I hope not) blues. I feel as if I don’t know a lot of people here well, certainly not comparable to my friends from home (but that’s to be expected), I feel as if I can’t really go around confidently (perhaps a catch 22 cycle about how I feel and my skills in German) which is just contributing to me feeling really down and not willing to talk. Although I did get dressed, made up, and went around downstairs, and a bit outside. Progress is slow isn’t it?

I know awareness of this is supposed to make me change and motivate me to action and movement, but I also appreciate that everything is a journey and I don’t think I’m ready to do that yet.

I know that it will change, and like most things, this is a process, denial, depression, acceptance, change, etc. I know I will move forwards with it, just for today I would like to just be a bit, and not work on changing or progressing, just be how I feel.

This personal blog concept is still a little strange to me, but I’m working with it. I think one of the main things revolving around my mind in the past weeks has been the changes I have to go through. During my past relationship I gave up parts of myself, debateably most of them, in the pursuit of being someone worth of someone elses love. Which, as you might be able to imagine from it being a past relationship, didn’t work out. Not so much because I woke up and realized this wasn’t who I wanted to be, but because it wasn’t working out. I think I ultimately wish I could have woken up like that and thought, this isn’t who I should be, but I didn’t, because I think I had lost touch with myself. Anyway, having in a sense, given up things; my home, my friends, my family, familiarity in a sense, I wonder about many things.

First off, I wonder about my choice of words, “given up”. It seems so harsh and a bit untrue because I still have them. But I also wonder if I harbor a shred of resentment, possibly? (although it hurts a bit to admit this), at giving these things up in the pursuit of love and a future I really want. But I think the choice of words is more about coming to terms with the consequences of change. I think, somewhere I must have heard it, is that change is often spurred by pain. Because if you’re all la-di-da happy, then what incentive do you have to change? If you stay at home all day, what incentive do you have to leave? If you always stay, when will you leave? There is a degree of pain in change. Call it what it is. It is indeed a learning experience, but there are some that are indeed painful. But perhaps, as I hope to find, it is a cathartic cleansing type of pain, a necessity to growth. I’m not saying all growth must be painful, but there is a certain pain to leaving behind what you’ve known, being lonely, isolated, and forced to change.

And as I work through what I’m feeling, as I’m typing, I realize I don’t remember what the second thing was anymore.

I remember now, for a bit I felt that learning German was just another thing I was giving up. Because I write a lot, and read even more so, I felt that being able to communicate eloquently was something that was inherently me. I am proud of it, so “giving up” English, was in a sense, and still is, hard for me. I know you have to work in German and what not to get better, but there has to be a way to balance both. Maybe half and half I guess. I haven’t found it yet, but there has to be a way. Maybe then everything will all feel a bit more manageable.

I realize this is posted after the day, but I just set the site up and wanted to post what I had written, even though it is way past the fourth.

So if you know me really well, you will know I’m not terribly patriotic. I’m not anti-USA, I just don’t generally get so excited about the famous holidays for their intended purpose. I don’t go to an annual Fourth of July party, I don’t barbeque, I rarely participate like the majority of people. This year was an exception though. For some reason, an ocean away, I have found a sliver of my patriotic spirit. I wore red, white, and blue, obviously, and I organized a party. And for a few days when I didn’t think it would happen, I was really upset, and I was wondering why. I never had a party or celebrated before, so why all the upset now? Why, when I am in a country full of non-Americans, for the most part, do I feel so upset about not having a proper party? And then it kind of hit me when we were eating dinner. A friend asked us, potentially slightly jesting (but with good intentions I’m sure) to me and the rest of the group, what we liked about America the best. I was first and it made me think. I said something along the lines of, “I definitely don’t harbor a blind love for America (clearly paraphrasing since I have the memory of goldfish), but it is the only home I’ve got, the place I call home home for most of my life, and for that, I love it for it”. I hope I was more eloquent, although I highly doubt it. But it is true. I wrote about feeling as if I was keenly made to feel, in my own head, to be the outsider, and so it made me aware of what I was.

Despite my qualms and interesting history, I am American. It’s home, and it took me an ocean away to find out why I love it. It was different in Vienna because they made us feel we could attain Thanksgiving with the special dinner and I was with many students all missing our homes and turkeys. But yesterday it was just me, alone, being reminded of what I had left behind, feeling nostalgic. Which lead to me baking an apple crisp, close enough to a pie for me, and we made burgers. It was the best Fourth of July I have ever had, in Germany, and on the Third of July (I should mention this fact since I haven’t before now), because it was the most heartfelt and patriotic I think I’ve ever been. So today, while it is actually the Fourth, happy Fourth of July to everyone!

Thank you to everyone who helped me celebrate!

Because if I talked about yesterday, it would involve a lot of tiredness and jetlag. I went to bed at midnight, mostly because I have this, debateably, horrible compulsion where I cannot sleep until I am unpacked. Since I unpacked for hours in this apartment, which is already full with stuff, it took that long.

That being said, I woke up around five from a deep sleep, puttered around a bit, then went back to sleep until eleven. I then proceeded to do errands which involved going back to the grocery store and the pharmacy. I also did laundry, made gazpacho for lunch, unfortunately not mine, and kept cleaning.

Walking around the mall, I felt like everyone was looking at me, almost as if I didn’t belong and everyone could tell. Whether it be asking where parmesan cheese was, what method of payment I wanted to use, or negotiating an employee to pack my shopping bag, I felt like I was an outsider, and everyone knew it. It was that weird sensation you get when you are absolutely certain that everyone, literally, is looking at you. Not even staring, because that would confirm that nagging suspicion, but that they need just one glance to look at you and know, because it’s that quick to determine, that you are the outsider. Like when you walk into a room and everyone looks, then goes back to what they’re doing. I’m sure, with about forty percent certainty and sixty percent hope, that it will go away.

I don’t know if it’s because I feel I’m dressed differently, don’t really speak German, or am scared to draw attention to myself, but it is what it is.

On the subject of German, I know in my heart that I will feel much better once I can speak more of it. I also know, deep in my heart, that I am the only one standing in my way. Which is both infuriating and terrifying at the same point. I am stuck inside that box of sameness, where you look at yourself in the mirror and know exactly who that person staring back at you, except now I can’t be that here. We could say, whatever, be who you are, and I am, but change is good and both realistic in this sense. I must learn, I must change so I can be happy here, fit into, with a degree of flexibility. I am a new person here, and furthermore, which is really what is important in my mind, is that I want to be. I want to change, I want to learn and adapt, and figure out who this person is that stepped off the plane into a, seemingly, different world.