2021: The Year Without Writing

I've become a better writer this year. I have not put a word on paper, and yet I know that I am so, so much closer to the art that I expect of myself. And surely you would know that this blog is not where I designated my life's writing to live. Maybe, sometimes, it came to die here. But over the years this has been the space where I wanted to track my progress. Not always as a writer, but as a human being. All the lessons of life and how I experience them. And this past year this space was silent because I experienced them. All of those horrible, gritty truths we have all been through. I was forced into uncompromising realism by a virus that introduced me to new concepts such as loneliness and stagnation. But good writers aren't born, they're made. 

I decided not to write anything. For the first time in my life, I listened to the voice in my head that said "you don't have to do this". Two years of a therapist telling me finally paid off, eh? I never wrote a line (I wasn't paid for) for anyone but myself and, this year, I couldn't do it for me. I needed to do nothing. I have never, and I mean it, never just sat in my feelings and watched them. This year, I had to learn to not chase the sentence, but the actual feeling. And you know, that is why I sucked at writing: you need to know who you are to write. You will otherwise write what you expect to write. This blank page right here is a mirror and I cannot expect it to reflect me if I make stupid faces all the time.

Those faces have been small, subtle lies over the years: "No, that guy didn't break my heart, I totally moved on". "Investing time into the guy I liked in High School was not a waste of time, it was a lesson." "My father was a great man deep down." "I don't know if I want to have a family." You know what's worst: I believed it myself. I was standing in front of my mirror smiling, thinking what I was putting out there was my true self. It wasn't. Anything I wrote down wasn't me. But it took me until now to know it wasn't me. Because for some reason I was unable to feel pain, and without pain those things that happened to me can't possibly be processed. 

So this year I sat down to do it. I've known for a while I was using my career as a distraction, but my career wasn't going to progress so well, there went that distraction. I was still very busy because I am a privileged, lucky son of a bitch that bought an apartment and then had to deal with the painfully happy stress of organizing a new life. Again. And in those moments between that I was sitting in an empty apartment that I owned torn between agonizing loneliness and physically painful gratitude. I wouldn't change a move of my life because I did everything I could have possibly done to get me where I am. And that's where the problem was lying: I was always doing it, always nailing it. It takes a global pandemic for me to face the demons because, trust me, I would have found a way not to because I do everything I want to, and usually successfully.

So I couldn't actually write because I wouldn't have nailed it. My feelings were actually happening off the paper for once. I am new to many of the feelings of this year, so I was new to writing about them. It makes me feel so insufficient that I cannot write a sentence about what I feel when I listen to "This Year's Love". Nobody could ever understand what this song means to me. Of course there are lyrics that are not hard to interpret, although I didn't as a child listening to this song for the first time not knowing English. But I had to be today years old to understand what this song means. Because sometimes it takes understanding life to understanding a written word. And because of that, my words couldn't have the correct meaning.

What does this mean for the future? Probably nothing. Actually learning how to be "mad" is just a really good lesson and will hopefully mean I make less mistakes, especially with men. Understanding that "sadness" isn't a bad emotion was also necessary and probably essential to being the writer I want to be. I feel more than myself than ever because, well, I don't care that I am lame. And now often lazy and introverted. I wanna be that. I bought my first ever TV in 2021 and am enjoying watching "How To Get Away With Murder" with ice cream for hours. That's never happened. I was never that person. Or maybe I was, who knows. I don't think about it anymore, I'm just doing whatever I'm doing. No reasons. Just being. 

Covid In The Countryside: Why People Hate Boomers

We've all been through the same year, and we've all got our things to say about it. I dare say that only few of you would "strongly agree" with the notion that the last year was a success. I spent much of the last year in my mother's house, in a little village in Germany, right by the Belgian and Dutch border. While this place was a heavenly place to live through early childhood, being a 30-something paper chaser with global ambitions has fared badly. The only possible activity around here is "going for a walk" which has been the greatest gift of any lockdown scenario but also exposes you to what the village population, average age 65, has come to perceive in this last quarter of their lifetime. "I can't complain", says Karen from the house around the corner, "but it's all shit, isn't it? Trouble, trouble, always trouble". And if you give Karen a chance to go on, she will tell you everything about her hard life in Germany as a boomer. 

Karen was born right after the war. She met her husband age 16 when her father, a factory worker, started training a new kid, age 17, at his workplace and thought he makes a fine gentleman. They married and bought the house around the corner when Karen was pregnant with her first child at age 22. Her father had died after working at the factory his whole life, so the 15.000 Deutsche Mark Karen inherited from her father paid for the downpayment on the house. Karen had two more children and lived in the house with a patio facing the forest for the rest of her days. Her youngest daughter lives in the house with her because it has six bedrooms and therefore offers enough rooms for Karen, her husband and her daughter's family. The heart of the house is the large south-facing garden with sunshine throughout the day. Her two sons live a ten and a thirty minute drive away. Karen still does her own shopping but yes, she can tell she's getting older. 

Right, this is the lady that is telling me that everything is trouble, always. I'm sure when Karen's various dogs passed away, her husband went through that cancer scare and their son had a car accident her faith in Jesus was shaken. "In Jesus name, father, please help my family", would be the only way in which Karen thought she could contribute to getting through these troublesome situations. She spent many nights crying because she was worried. The family never had money problems because her husband's contract at the factory was permanent and, of course, allowed Karen to stay home and care for the kids but when big expenses hit, like a new car for the brood after he'd crashed his car, Karen was hoping for the magic money tree... but it never appeared. But in the end, Jesus always prevailed. Therefore, she always faithfully marked her ballot "Christian Conservatives" as a good Catholic would. Now an old lady, she looks back at a happy life but, boy, was it always easy? No, sir!

I am surrounded by Karen. Ursula, Marianne and Irene tell a similar story. All of them married early, had children and raised them themselves. Raising children is no piece of cake, you know. They are struggling with not seeing their grandchildren often because their kids are too busy. They are coming to terms with their deteriorating bodies and some of them are realizing that they actually haven't learned much since high school because, back in their day, university wasn't a thing. So in "normal times" they enjoy sitting in at university, you know, out of interest for a topic, at a lecture at the local university to "keep their brain sharp". The daily walk through the forest is also getting harder but one's gotta work a little to keep in shape. They are looking forward to the end of the pandemic because then, finally, they can see their grandkids again "without fear" because, you know, they ARE seeing them.

On every walk I take, hearing them talk about how much everything sucks, my bodies reaction to them is firmly engrained on my face; I fail to encourage them after they are complaining about their troubles, the corners of my mouth are physically incapable of coming up and the conversation will end, one way or another, after the sentence "life isn't always easy, huh?" was uttered which seems like an inevitability. They love to compare the Coronavirus pandemic to World War II which, I might add, is a disaster they never had to live through. But they heard a lot, and it sounds worse which I'm sure it was. They have heard of all kinds of trouble: Bosnia in the 90s, 9/11 and, oh my, the 2008 mortgage crisis sounds like a lot of hardship. But here in the village, they were spared, thank God. 

Maybe one day I will look just as dumb as Karen. It's likely that by the time I hit her age, my nephew Tammo will have had to literally save the planet with his action while I celebrate I have been able to grow up in what they used to call "democracy". We will fondly look back to the day when potatoes were grown on a field, not a lab. It doesn't look like it gets easier Earth-side for the generations to come but every time I see Karen I have a strong desire to tell her about "us". About how we will never own a flat, never mind a house in this neighborhood. How the only people that will be able to have this heavenly childhood of mine are Karen, Ursula, Marianne and Irene's children because that's how homeownership works now: you either inherit, or well, there is no house for you. I tell her how we studied at university not to keep our brain sharp but to stand a chance at getting a job, and how even all of this studying, working 70h weeks for free to hope for the "break" and never ever knowing "security" in a job I still get paid less than all the men on the team and some of the women that are better at deception than me. And how nothing is permanent in our lives, despite the contracts, because in a world of 8 billion there is always another "you". 

The stress of being me is unreal. Without knowing Karen aside from her complaints during a Sunday walk, I envy her. Her liberty to complain is a luxury I don't have as the only thing I have left in this pandemic is optimism. The day I stop closing my eyes with force from seeing what is happening to this planet, my generation, my future, I lose. I lose! Having worked hard all my life got me the fancy job but is failing to get me, and will continue to fail to finance my own home. My fancy job is gone the minute I make a baby and if I make a baby, the mortgage I am hoping for if I ever get paid fairly to buy a one bedroom apartment with a north-facing window, if any windows, is unlikely to be paid. I've wanted a dog my whole life but given that I would need to live next to a green space to have one, and that means a 50k increase in price due to an "in demand" location, determines for now, with 32 years under my belt, a tech job at a company literally everyone on this planet knows, and just a single income, I can't have one. And I am one of the lucky ones. I might make it happen one day. And that despite not having a father with a company or rich friends... 

The reason I complain about this is not self-pity. In fact, if there ever was someone I really pitied it would be those who come after me, finding this planet in even worse shape, witnessing the diminishing effects of hard work altogether and having to rely simply on luck to possibly make their dreams come true. Younger people just spent a year indoors to save the lives of Karen and the likes and have to now watch Karen go on an international beach vacation without testing because she's had the Pfizer shot twice while the younglings wait until it's their turn in the prioritization list. Being old in 2020 was certainly not an easy thing, but being young in 2020, and any year thereafter, is worse. While boomers enjoyed the simple life in the village, young people are hustling to one day get the shot, just the shot, to have a simple life as well. It most likely won't be a simple life. 

Of course, there are no literal Karens in a German village. Our people aren't called "Karen". But you know who they are. Every village has them. And yet, today, watching Karens complain about their "hard lives" that were nothing less than just "lives", hurts me as I look into the future. Germany elects a new government this year. We are asking young people to be optimistic, we are asking them to care. All this makes me think of is "How dare you?" in the voice of one of the only voices we heard in the last decades that probably mattered. There they were, laughing about Greta Thunberg for caring about the planet, calling her a brat. If you're younger than 25 reading this, you have no business calling her spoiled. Because you are. Spoiled with choice, spoiled with a future, spoiled with being able to grow up on a planet that isn't turning on you (or well, you were spoiled enough to allow yourself to ignore it). If I, with the wealth I have accumulated via a mix of soul-destroying hard work and unfathomable luck, feel like owning my own home is out of reach, generations proceeding mine are screwed. Who could they possibly vote for? The saviour of this generation might not have been born yet. Karen will have to lose before the GenZers can win. 

And now to the bottom line: How do we fix this? Politics won't, I think we have seen how far that kind of power goes in the last 14 months preeetty well. Not because they don't want to but because they can't. They depend on voters and that's us, you and me. As long as the parties need Karen's vote, they won't be coming forward with a message such as "we are going to tax inheritances like, let's say, a lot". No Karen would not vote for them, rightly so. But as long as we don't actually do what is necessary, like taxing inheritances by, let's say, a lot, the next generation is out of luck. So where do we go from there? Do we wait for Karl Marx to be right or do we manage the inevitable disaster? Of course, fairness ends in taxing those who worked according to belief A when we, one day, just go for belief Z. We can't do that either. So we keep going with the status quo according to Karen. Until it fails. 

I'm doing nothing, hypocritically writing a ridiculous blog post to advocate for change I am not a part of, still waiting to be paid not just "well" but "fairly" so I, eventually, might start thinking about a mortgage to enslave me to a bank, an institution I both despise and would love to avoid. But what I do believe in is hope. Maybe one day I'll have the idea or energy to change this. Maybe my desperation about this system will turn into inspiration. And maybe I will just do what everyone else is doing, trying to get out of this feeling by merely buying Bitcoin. Because really, if I don't and the change that needs to happen isn't occurring in my lifetime, I'm just screwed without getting cryptos NOW. I suppose what I'm saying is we're screwed. Except Karen. She's had her life, and it was tough, oh so tough. When it wasn't. Yet, she's gonna be voting for what's best for the next generation. Make it make sense. I can't. 

Lockdown Watching 90s Shows: The Reckoning of Dawson's Creek

Like everyone born between the years 1983 and 1989 and a Netflix account, I have been rewatching Dawson's Creek. And I almost didn't make it: after the initial nostalgia subsided, the horrific writing killed the characters! As a kid, I watched the first two seasons and it shaped my life, as it does, chasing the Leary's house on my vision board. Capeside's perfect symmetry where people's biggest problem is a coke-dealing Mr Potter and a drunk driver one fateful night when Mitch went to get milk drew a picture of life that was inpiring. And now, 20 years later, I am finding myself in the often discussed reality of TV giving us wrong expectations about life during a pandemic, fuming at the depictions I so freely believed. It occurred to me that the WB is to blame for a generation's collective search for a Pacey when all we can get is a Charlie. Watching back, I saw just how dangerous these shows were in teaching us nothing about real life - and set us up for disappointment. 

Let's start with the pivotal point of the show: SEX! Season one to three is a race to who loses their virginity when and how nothing else matters. Maybe living in Capeside, where you row a boat to your friend's house, there really isn't much else to keep track of. Having lived more than 15 years now, the first flaw I find is 15-year-olds trying to get into the coitus game, in a rural, predictably conservative place that probably does not have the most advanced sex ed class in the 90s, not producing a little teen pregnancy. But I can look past this. It's a teen drama after all. And all of these characters are very serious about their "rubbers". Great job, kids! But each member of our little clique has slept with everyone by the end of the show. Virgin Joey even dates the gay guy. In the course of the show, Jen hooks up with six boys, four of whom had also slept with her two best girlfriends (the other two being awful, as boys are, sigh... the 90s). Pacey slept with 100% of the female cast. The whole Pacey, Joey and Audrey thing is just so cringeworthy, it wrongly taught me I need to be ok with my friends sleeping with the same guys as me. Let me tell you guys, when this happens in real life, it's not "cool".  I know... 

Speaking of Pacey, he is, of course, a completely unrealistic character but is arguably the reason behind thousands of failed relationships. I know this to be true. One friend of mine responded to a Dawson's Creek tweet of mine with her story about "searching for a Pacey" for all her life. Now, past thirty, we recreated the character as follows: lovely, sincere, good-looking - but dysfunctional. Oh honey, we all know that guy! The intelligent kid that is so misunderstood he is flunking high school until he gets the "break" as both a chef and an investment broker. The guy that loves only one girl. The guy that is from a broken home and just needs a woman who loves him. If you find yourself reading this and finding this character attractive, call a therapist now; you will need one once you met him.

But as unrealistic Pacey is, the real problem is the depiction of Jen Lindley. This is probably its own blog post because watching the show back I realized how much I love Jen Lindley after passing the stage in my life that is not 14-year-old Sina in the early Naughties. Back then, I believed it: Jen is a slut, she is easy, she sleeps with men at 13 and gets drunk, maybe she shouldn't complain about being mistreated when she is so cheap. Yeah, I know. Do you think I like that the show succeeded in making me see her that way? Jen is the only likeable character simply because she isn't perfect and actually works on herself the entire time she is in Capeside. She is the only character who is not excusing her bad behavior with "not knowing any better". She is also the only person who is never purposely a dick. Her end is the biggest cop out in television history and it is not surprising to me that Michelle Williams went on to become the most amazing human being after the show; if they'd ended my story like this I would have made it my mortal desire to prove the writers they were fools, too. FOOLS!

So now, Joey. Joey, Joey, Joey. I would almost rather not talk about her. I hate talking badly about women and I have to remind myself that Joey is the product of a male writer so my disdain for her is entirely not the character's or Katie Holme's fault, although anyone smiling with their tongue pushed against their teeth should... just stop. Joey is a thoroughly incredible character - and I don't mean "incredible" in the way we describe Lady Gaga. Joey's story contradicts itself, like writers couldn't decide on who she was going to be, or trying to make her be everything all at once. First, it takes Joey years to lose her virginity with Pacey but once the cherry is popped, she does what any good Hollywood girl would do: she "lives a little"! What a horrible arc. Her spontaneous outbursts of "being fun" are completely misplaced (and problematic!), never mind the ridiculous storyline of an accomplished Literature professor liking a college freshman and publishing her pathetic short story about "kissing Dawson" in a Journal. It's like they didn't even try. Joey is a black felt tip pen they tried to make a pencil, a fountain pen and a neon pink highlighter in the span of six seasons. 

And then of course, there is the title character, Dawson, or how I like to call him No-Flaw-Son. I feel bad for the wasted potential of James Van Der Beek who clearly has a personality to be hit with a script for a person whose thing is "being into movies". Ouch! Despite giving the show its name, they did not bother giving Dawson a story arc. I just watched six seasons of the show and don't remember when Dawson liked or didn't like Joey. Are they even friends for most of the show? Just like every character on this show, once Dawson loses his virginity, sex just finds him. He shags Jen, an actress and a movie critic, the latter two on the first date. Naturally. It's my least favorite bit of teen drama: they wait seasons for sex, then it's suddenly just happening. And Dawson of course becomes Mr Leary, the feature film director, as a sophomore in college at a no name college in Boston after leaving USC. This is why we all have unrealistic expectations of life... 

I know this has become another rant about a six season run of something nobody made me watch. I chose. However, the real appeal of watching Dawson's Creek in 2021 was the eye-opening of HOW the show was watched then. The intentions of the writers are very clear, they're just old-fashioned and sad! Very sad! Then again, Dawson's Creek is a product of male leadership, the late-90s misogyny is probably a contemporary artefact of artistry at this point. While being enjoyable to watch due to the beautiful and comfortable backdrop of Capeside, especially in a time when "the home" has become the only venue of my life, I see how shows like Dawson's Creek are to be enjoyed with  caution. I believed the writers. I thought a life like the one of those kids was available to me. But that is a lie. And I simply do not believe in writing that lies. There are a plethora of ways to make any story believable, from Harry Potter to Star Wars. But I mean, yeah, Dawson's Creek had a much smaller budget, eh...

2020: Year of Survival

For the 12th year, I sit down to think about my year and write that down. 12 years is a very long time, and you would think my writing has improved. We grow older, our skills improve, and most years what I came to conclude was how much I had grown. I reflected on my various fortunes and all the things I learned: some years I managed to build a career as a journalist in the Middle East withstanding prosecution, some years I got a couple of Masters Degrees. Most years I could at least look back at my advanced skills. And then... 2020: I survived 2020. I am still here. Yaaaay! When I think back at the biggest moments, the Lady in the water finding peace at Bly Manor and purchasing new yoga pants online come to mind. This year wasn't about progress, this year was about waiting. It was about holding on when it seemed like there was nothing worth fighting for. It was about survival.

Let me tell you something about my year 2020: I started it with a therapist who was going to help me work through the last 31 years of life. Childhood and the years since coming to England, it turns out, have caused something they call trauma. I'm not saying this as a complaint, you guys probably all have your fair share, whether you know it or not. My issue was that I couldn't cry. I hadn't cried since spring 2019 and then only because I had pretty good reason. I came home from a party on NYE 2019, ringing in what we expected to be the Roaring Twenties, and unloaded a gallon of tears. I knew I had so much work to do. I knew emotions would be coming up if I continued this work I had started. Let me tell you, this year I did not struggle to cry. 

I am not a person who usually struggles with mental illness and I am not now, so those who want to read this account of a year with those glasses on are wrong. What we all had to go through has nothing to do with a chemical imbalance in the brain, it has to do with disillusionment about what we thought we were. Most of us were on a path, and we believed things that had proven to be true, like "work hard and you will be rewarded". We lived for the advancement of our dreams, whether that is a job, finding a partner or partying in Ibiza with our friends as long as our livers allow if. And then suddenly, there comes an event, and it's not about dreams anymore. It's not even about what is achievable. It's about pausing, it's about accepting that what you were believing, what you'd been doing, is no longer true. You just have to wait. Just wait. Struggling with accepting that is not depression, it's disappointment. Disappointment is a luxury problem in 2020 but it was a problem... 

At the same time, you look around and everyone is in the same boat. You realize you have to be grateful for the things that haven't been taken away from you. Dreams are the casualty of the spoiled in 2020. I woke up every day since March 16 writing into my gratitude journal how lucky I am to still have a job. But I had never signed up to the job I was doing. It was a job, yes, but it wasn't MY job. I knew that day 2020 would bring me no closer to the skills I wanted to learn the day I accepted the job. Some skills, sure, but not what I was hoping for. Years and years I had spent investing into professional fulfilment, and there I was working 15 hour days on things that had very little to do with what I was hired to do. But I had a job. I had to be grateful. And I was still alive.

My 2020 struggle was forcing me to love things I don't love. I felt obliged to love my job because I had one. The comfort of my room became the best thing in my world although my world involved people, usually. Never in my life was practicing to appreciate the "little things" so vital. I was scared of standing still every day but ran for my life on the Heath in order to avoid cabin fever. What a problem to have, right? But despite my survival, and often prosperity and luck, I was struggling so much. So much. I had to simply accept that I wasn't going to advance professionally or privately. All the plans for my personal development, maintain a successful relationship, spend more time with the people I loved, were on hold, too. It wasn't exactly possible, was it? My most successful week was the one where I learned how to do the Crow pose. I missed so many people, sooo many, but it wasn't acceptable to complain about it because everyone missed their friends. 

Yes, readers, I can hear myself. I sound like a spoiled brat that has everything and sits in a golden cage quarantining. I managed for months to not despair over the color of my cage but I felt trapped, too. My point is not to indulge in my misfortune because, honestly, I had none of it relative to this planet, but I never do. I am the golden cage kinda girl in any year, too lucky for her own good. I created some of my own luck but man, I deserve none of the gold inside my cage. And when you feel bad regardless, shame also kicks in for feeling bad although you have it better than others. But all I was feeling was grief: grief for my old life, the people we had lost and couldn't see. And constant worry: will everyone I care about be ok? I could only make sure I don't get Covid, but what about mom? What about my pregnant sister trapped in Egypt? Will those s I love keep their jobs? I started being jealous of those #Covidiots Twitter was so vocal about because at least they didn't seem to care. I cared too much. 

The absence of hope, I learned, is the beginning of the end of everything. Covid is not the worst thing that has happened to me in life but it has robbed me of doing a bad thing with the help of those I love. Without my roommate, the treasure sitting on our rooftop for hours, days, weeks with me, there would have been days without speaking. Together, we imagined what this year meant for all the years to come. Would we stick with the path we were on that was, as of this summer, on hold, possibly gone for good? All those considerations I had to make without getting to see the people I planned to have in my future. I couldn't see my family, my boyfriend, any of my friends. All I had was hoping for the days to change. Without the hope that one day I could see them again, hopefully in the not too distant future. The dreams of better days is all there is. Maybe that's what makes today so special: turning the page has never been more necessary. 

I can look back on two years, one I just elaborated on: a year of darkness for many, of standing still and surviving until the light returns. This depiction is true for me, and I know for many of you. But I have to be careful not to discard the good which I know is the key to happiness. I am not a fan of telling people to count their blessings in a time they are feeling low, so I decided not to do another of these posts that would depict the "other" year I could look at: a year of learning how to better deal with bullshit, of the sunny days on the rooftop while locked up, a year of teaching myself valuable lessons and "becoming a better person". No, not this time. I decided to look back at an unsuccessful year. A year not to remember. I will not miss it and I will not force myself to appreciate it because I'm alive. It is pressure to love everything you are given. I encourage you to have the courage to admit to yourself that not learning Spanish this year is ok. You were busy surviving. And today a new year starts and I had 10 months to practice hope. And I have never been more hopeful. Bring on the vaccine, I'm ready for my Roaring Twenties alright!

According to Spotify, and my own perception, my most played song 2020... and feeling!

Covid Diaries: How A Virus Destroyed The Word "OK" This Year

Been a while, huh? Expression feeds off feelings, and feelings are dangerous in a year like 2020. I want to say "Congratulations!" to everyone who is still here, reading, without falling apart. Because while I watched the world fall apart this year, I tried hard to hold on to the very fragile thread my own world was hanging on. This said, consider that I have a job, a wonderful home, and most importantly, a body free from Covid-19 and any other detectable disease that has symptoms. The truth that I am one of the "lucky ones" is both devastating and unfulfilling to my own emotional household. And as I pack up my life for the 10th time in my life because keeping this house in Covid-times has proven unprofitable for my landlady, I am reminded that even a good existence is bad this year.

There are two opposing stories I can tell about 2020. The one I choose to identify with is the one where there is a global pandemic, I keep my job, I am safe, I work on great but exhausting projects and I spend a great summer with people I love. The other is the one there is a global pandemic that comes close to destroying the life of the people I love most, I watch people I don't even know lose everything and I can't do anything about it and I try to focus on my own luck by being able to turn away... but I cannot do it. It's not who I am. And I cannot change it. I am not dying myself and have been told that I need to be grateful for being "unaffected", however, it has not been easy for me to watch others do exactly that. 

Of course, my pain doesn't compare to the pain of being the one who lost a loved one. Or a business. Or a job. How I feel about my own pain is comparing a bowl of rotten Skittles to a swimming pool filled with them. My bowl full of shitty Skittles reeks and tastes like crap, sure, but it's a bowl. Of all the things that happened to people this year, my pathetic little bowl is one meal of bullshit and possible completely consumed by 2022. I should stop indulging in the pain the pandemic inflicted on my family and I. We have a very high chance of survival, bigger than most. But living in a world surrounded by pain IS pain. I see it. And it takes away all joy which, granted, is not my breath but a tough thing to lose. The threshold of pain this planet can endure is blown over and over again. 

In the beginning of the year, we celebrated great news: My sister was pregnant. In Egypt where she lives. Fast forward a few months and her partner is actually dead, we cannot get her out of the country because no flights, you know, and we have to worry about her care as Egypt isn't a huge fan of reporting a true picture of their Coronavirus cases. She's alone in Egypt, mourning a death while preparing for new life, and nobody is allowed to help her. This just doesn't happen. It's not an issue we were ever prepared to have. And hence, we were all splendidly overwhelmed. Through this all, my sister continued to teach children online, I work like a maniac but that's not new, neither is the lack of it actually being worth it. And even in these moments that teach you there is really only one thing that matters, and it's not work or (insert bullshit), you realize that even without a positive test you have lost so much this year.

Putting my own pain into perspective of the tsunami of terrible news this year has been challenging. My painfully optimistic outlook on life externally is a big pile of deception. Fake it until you make it, baby: If you can't actually enjoy life, pretend you are. We are going to do this for as long as we can because letting reality in is probably the end. I am mourning this year and everything it took from me. Covid did not take my nephew's father. Covid didn't take my boyfriend out of the country, making it impossible for me to see the only person I need. The emergence of Coronavirus did not make me work my ass off until I almost burned out. But the Coronavirus is taking away our opportunity to heal from these things. But look at me, talking about "healing" in 2020; foolish little girl thinking that healing can start while we are still bleeding.

While you might think I am not in a good place writing this, the truth is I sit here with two arms and two legs, a healthy lung as far as I know and the worst thing that happened to me this week is that a concert I had tickets for does not happen. I am definitely ok. However, my heart hurts knowing that whatever I feel is on the lower end of the spectrum of possible pain felt in 2020. If I am the lucky one, the one who had an easy ride this year, something is insanely wrong. When the life I have lived this year, with an excruciating amount of loss and pain, is branded "the good life", an inflation of meaning is happening to the word "good". When being ok means surviving until the vaccine hits the veins, "ok" has become a dire existence. Even John Mayer knew that waiting for the world to change is not where we should be at, yet here we are, trying to minimize scars rather than preventing damage. The damage is done. Non-negotiable. We just have to wait to see how bad it is.

#BLM: My apology

I originally wrote this last weekend, editing was real!

I'm not going to lie, I've been scared of this post. I started writing it a few times over the years, never finishing because I was too scared. Yes, me, the white girl talking about racism... "scared". What did I have to be scared of? Judgements, being misunderstood, getting in trouble over saying something "wrong" and potentially STILL being too engulfed in my privilege that I am speaking from a place that simply is not good enough. As of this week, I of course realize that the fact I always had a choice whether I want to chime in is the very essence of the problem. Because I don't HAVE a problem. I can, and did, reflect on myself quietly over years, but never talking about it in fear of repercussions. And although this is just a personal account of a white girl's experience, I want to use it as my personal check-in - and mostly, as an apology and vow to be better.

When Camila Cabello or Justin Trudeau got in trouble over the N-word and blackface over the last couple years, I was scared. I knew, even then, already, both of these things are absolutely unacceptable but knew one could find that in my past. As a child, we would dress up at church as the Three Kings for Christmas to raise money for starving children, and whoever "got to be" Melchior was getting painted in the face with soot. To describe Melchior, the N-word was colloquially used, it was a word like all the others. One of the candies we ate was called N***kiss, that was the actual name of the candy. What I'm saying here is that, I believe, I was actually taught to see differences in skin color. And these examples are just from my childhood when you could argue I couldn't have known better. In reality though, I see how it set me up for my later bias. And later in life, I don't have the "excuse" of childhood. I am responsible.

Fast forwarding, in my early 20s I was 100% of the opinion that I am not racist (I never consciously was) because my best friend was a black man from Angola. The fact he was my best friend and we never really talked about race and his experiences as a black man alone shows how badly I did here. My next step was to go teach in Kenia for a summer in college to learn more about racism by being the white person surrounded by black people. I am deeply ashamed of thinking that and would like to apologize for it although I never even told anyone. I was aware of being wealthy and white and thought going to teach in the slums of Africa would be a good experience for ME. I wanted it to be something that helps people, for someone else to benefit from how unfairly advantaged I was in life. Ouch, I cringe even writing it, and although I am reflecting now I feel uncomfortable for ever thinking that way. Talk about white saviours huh, I'm so ashamed of that. I thought I was doing good.

I arrived in Kenia and instantly made the experience so many white people have described as racism: I was suddenly in the "minority" by number, but at no point was I actually the minority. In Swahili, the word for "white person" is literally "rich white person", because the two adjectives "white" and "rich" are intertwined in reality there. My first response was that it was unfair because, of course, I was not "rich" in my experience of the word. In fact, where I was from I was anything but. I soon realized that I was rich. Took just a few minutes really. People were often touching my hair, stroking my face and almost always asking for something. I felt bad about it. I got harassed and coerced out of money a lot while I was in Nakuru, even right in front of the police, and when I asked for help they would say "poor you, what are you going to do?". At no point, and let me repeat it, never, was I actually in danger or felt any feeling but one we can today safely describe by saying "boo-fucking-hoo!". I was 21 and overwhelmed with the situation, nothing more. As the "Muzungu" I was, after the summer I just got onto a plane and it was over. Lucky me! That right there is why I will NEVER understand!

In Germany, and arguable other parts of the world I lived, it isn't even the racism against black people that is something I don't want to accept. And I see what people are saying about their perception that "Black Lives Matter" feels exclusive because if doesn't mention all the "others" but that, in my opinion, is just one of the things that needs to be addressed and rethought: Just because we are checking in on our racism now doesn't mean it's the only thing we have to address. From my little perspective, it is a start in conversation. And these conversations have now started, more so than before at least. I caught myself remembering how I changed the topic often when racism came up in conversation because I could feel that the people I was calling out were getting mad at me. I caught myself remembering how I myself claimed I wasn't racist. Racism doesn't mean one hates black people; it just means you exercised behaviour towards a person of color that differed from the one you would direct towards white people. And I have done that.

Soon, my family will greet its first member of color. One of the most important people in my entire life is going to be a person of African-American descent, and I fucking owe him to work so much harder. I owe him to do everything I can to make sure he has the same chances I had growing up because there is no logical or sensible explanation why it would be any other way. But I am not addressing racism because I have family members of color; I want to address it because it is wrong. It makes no sense. We've all made a collective mistake over the last few centuries believing in something we accepted as status quo that should never have been there, and I hope this time reminds us that racism isn't the only thing that applies to.

I for one want to apologize. I don't want to wait until I am famous and me singing along to 90s rap songs surfaces to which I then show a reaction. I know this stuff exists and I know I have acted in ignorance and perceived superiority. I want to express my regret over how I have treated people of color, people of different religion (damn, this is gonna be a post one day, my ignorance as a teenage church kid is a whole other story but I promise I'll get there) and just overall people who are different from me. I don't want to make excuses, blame problematic structures for my own bias; I should have realized sooner that things I was doing were wrong. It shouldn't take people telling me, it should be an innate questioning of your own behaviour. And I am probably still doing things I haven't even spotted that are unjust. I promise to listen and not get upset when I am getting called out; in fact, I invite a call out. I want to be part of progress, always, and as a white person who can never understand, I vow to at least stand. At least. 

How Quarantine Forced Me To Face My Childhood

Quarantine has imposed a situation on me, unsurprisingly, that I didn't think I'd have to face again: I moved back into my teenage room. Vaalserquartier, a village near Aachen in Germany, is surrounded by hills in three countries: the Dutch border is 20 yards from my childhood home, Belgium three miles maybe, if that. Surrounded by beautiful scenery, it is the perfect place for some hillwalking as your "daily exercise" and a long bike ride through three countries which sounds as amazing as it is. Given the circumstances a house near the countryside is a blessing nobody could have foreseen - but there is also the reality that I spent my teens in this room, this house, this place, promising myself to go away and never come back... whoops!

When you grow up in a world like mine, it's hard to innately acknowledge how fortunate you are. In my world growing up, I was not wealthy which is insane. My mom used to to point at the window right next to me now which was divided into four smaller windows. "If everyone in the world was on this window", she would say, "only one of the four smaller window parts would have rich people on it." She made me guess which part of the window I thought I was on. I guessed wrong of course. I had no idea I was on the "rich" part of the window, or the world, or that my mom was grossly exaggerating that one fourth of the people on the planet would be as lucky as me when it comes to growing up. But I didn't get that then. I was young. I thought what's out there must be better.

Of course I wasn't wrong. I saw the movies, at the time I thought it was the USA that had the better life because that's what the movies taught us in the 90s. I didn't know the places I would go to from here would not have hills, and green parks or even freedom of speech or democracy; blessings I didn't even grasp then. The things that are the most amazing about growing up in this town were things I had no idea were not the same way for everyone. Especially space was not a commodity I ever thought would become expensive, or even unattainable. I would ride my bike to a lake near my house most nights, watch the sunset and read on a pier overlooking the rolling hills surrounding the village. I had no idea that was special, not normal. 

Today, I sat on that pier again. I rode the same bike down there I bought age 14 to make it to my piano lessons not far from there. I had an mp3-player in the early 2000s which was the newest craze. It allowed me to upload 15 songs I could then play anywhere. Kelly Clarkson had written a song that I thought she had written for me: "Breakaway". It was about a small town girl that wanted to "fly away" and do bigger things. She also didn't want to forget where she came from, but she definitely wanted to experience, see more, do better. I obviously thought that was me. Wanting "more". As I sat there today, listening to the song to take me back and reflect, I tried to understand what "more" entailed.

This stupid pop song you have to be 14 to love literally makes me cry. That is 100% how I felt every day of my teenage life. I just did not believe that Vaalserquartier, the view of the village on the other hill, was what was there for me. Kelly names all the things she wants to do, and I have literally done all of them, including flying in a freaking private jet, and who can say that they have? And here I am, still sitting under the same damn tree 15 years later, hating myself for not seeing that perfection was there all along. Maybe it wasn't Vaalserquartier that was enough for me but the thirst for "more" was never quenched for me by breaking away. In fact, what I probably miss most in life is what I had in the very beginning of it. And when I did, I didn't want it.

What still rings true is the that breaking away and making a change takes more courage than I was aware I had. That is another thing I thought was normal. But it fucking isn't. Getting on a plane  to leave your parents at age 16 to go live abroad for a year might be something a lot of people do but I thought it was my destiny, everything I was born to do: leaving. And now that it has actually become a problem, because I leave all the time and can't stay with anyone or anywhere, I see the mistakes I set myself up for. Not appreciating that looking at a countryside sunset every night is not in any way normal, but a blessing and something  that speaks to my heart, is probably the only regret of my life: I missed the chance to love that experience for years. But then again I might only love it that much for exactly that reason: because it's an experience from the very beginning, not the break away.

I don't regret leaving at all. What I regret is believing, in my teenage, spoiled white kid mind, that I could do better. I wasn't wrong in many ways - but I was in others. I upgraded in experiences, also part of a privilege hard to fathom, I traveled to all of the places small town Kelly envisioned and I definitely make more money now. But I don't have a home. At least nothing that comes at all close to the one I was raised in. I made the change, and changed everything, even the good things. And those things are now missing. But today it's harder to change, and getting those things back is now out of my hands. Life is a vicious cycle of desire for things we don't have. But if quarantine taught me one thing it's that the pursuit of things we do not have leads to misery. The only thing that matters even a little bit is what is already there. Happiness comes from loving the things we have at the same time we have them.