surrendering, once again

a different b-side of myself

I know what I always talked about.

If I would’ve written this essay earlier, it would’ve been a different one.

On Friday, I arrived in Brighton and I was crying myself to sleep the first night. I hasted through the streets, carrying all my luggage and was so sad that I wanted to return. I’ve seen so many friends return after having started their new life. Maybe they’ve got something out of that experience or not. Some returned to their mundane life as it would’ve been forgotten what they cried about to me on the phone some weeks earlier.

I wanted to return too. I felt the skin crawl out of my comfort zone and I felt like I wasn’t ready yet. I’ll never be ready. One day, it had to happen. I’m not saying that it’s over now. Oh no. It’ll happen many times over and over again. I’ll travel new places and come back home over and over again. I won’t feel ready at all times and still surrender to the change over and over again.

Today was Sunday and I had to get toilet paper, kitchen papers and some chocolate sweets for my hormones. I chose a new street to walk and on my way home, it was the first time I really appreciated that I am here now. I am in Brighton. I am in England. I am in the country that speaks a language I chose a few years ago to become the one of my heart. I am living on my own. I can do whatever I want, whenever I want.

I never could adopt the idea of a routine or a weekly planning session for necessary back when I was at home. Today, I get it. And to be fair, I had a routine. It didn’t look like a perfectly scheduled calendar or a habit tracker. It was my Mama waking me up before she left the house to go to her hair salon and start her work day. It was the 11am where I started doing the tasks and responsibility she gave me for the day. It was her lunch breaks we shared together. It was the 2pm she left back to her work and I started my work too. It was the afternoons her partner came home and we joked around and then he dedicated himself to his tasks and I started to daydream ~ as usual. It was the dinner time we all enjoyed the most and it was the late evenings either my Mama already went to bed to read or they watched together some French comedy and I went upstairs to escape in my dancing room into a fantasy I built up from scratch or to be fair, from my latest crush or project idea I had. It was the nighttime where my parents already drowsed in dreamland and I watched old movies, wrote poems about the guy that stole my heart and never called or dedicated the silence of the night to my business once again as ideas sparkled in and didn’t let me sleep.

That was my routine back home.

Now, I’m here. On my own. Not knowing anyone in Brighton I could just call up and do something together. Every new activity gives me hope in meeting someone I will spend lots of time with. I know that time will come when I least expect it. Cause right now it’s myself I spend lots of time with. And I like myself. Maybe it was all what I needed to be able to like myself. I always dreamt in my bedroom back home to be this person and lived her out late at nights with Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan as soundtrack and my disco ball shining. Now I am her. At all times. At all places. I can’t escape her. I don’t need her to escape my reality. And although I am kinda having the question of what will happen with me the moment I stop dreaming, I am alright. I am surrendering. What for a word: surrender. And what for an impact and importance it already had on my life this year.

Here’s a little poem I started to write right before I wrote this little essay. And of course, I had Karma by Taylor Swift in my ears while writing it (and oops just saw that i dropped a name in there that i maybe should’ve covered with a tape 🤭):