The Homemaking

22 sounds and seems like a reasonable number to finally ask yourself (again) about how do you feel about yourself, at least for me and Taylor Swift. The difference is just that Taylor Swift had succeeded to put it perfectly melodically poetically logic, “I am feeling twenty-two.” And I, meanwhile, needed to bounce myself here and there and here and there and here and there, and still hadn’t found the perfect answer about how I feel about myself.

A very best friend of mine had currently asked what maturity means for me. I spontaneously and very much surely answered that maturity requires two and only two points; 1. To be brave enough to accept consequences of what we have done, and 2. To be able to forgive and let go. Little did she know, her question ruined my head later that night – is being able to spontaneously and very much surely define what maturity means that I am mature?

22 sounds and seems like a reasonable number to finally ask yourself (again) about how you do feel about yourself.

Up to this point, I’ve faced enough major changes in my life, most of them happened even all at once, and most of them I had to face alone – or so I felt. I guess I wouldn’t blab about how many times I did have to cry at nights, being like a total shit because all of those changes kept coming and coming before I even finished with one (except that I already did). But I want to write, that all these changes have shaped me into a different person. So to answer the question, how do I feel about myself? Well, I feel like a different person.

The security-freak version of me, after all these changes had learned to finally understand, that I can’t get ahold of everything. Some things are meant to let go, some other things are meant to let go some other times.

I am pretty sure it has lots to do with the new life I am currently making in Germany. Looking back, it wasn’t always fun being in a whole new different culture, I remember feeling homesick, I remember missing everything that I can call home, I remember that I cried because I have never thought that loneliness could actually reach the point I thought it couldn’t reach. But, hey, I bring myself here. Accept the consequences, my soul!

This adaptation and culture-shock phase kinda reminded me of Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection. It is everybody’s instinct to try to survive. And that was exactly what I should do when there’s no other place to run to; I try to survive. But lately I’ve been thinking that maybe I’ve gotten a little bit too far in this adapting that the person inside me is shifting – what brought me to the next thought – maybe I am not shifting, maybe I have always been that person, and now that I finally be in the place where I belong to, I finally am able to express my real self, because my environment supports me to do so.

But why still do I miss home more than ever – whatever “home” might mean.

And the next thing I knew, it has brought me the question that haunted me (or everyone in their puberty, may I say) years ago, who am I? The question that I thought I already have answer of, the question that I thought I would never ask myself ever again. Where are these changes taking me? Into the better understanding of myself? Or, into a whole new self-identity that is just so far from familiar to my old self?

Charlemagne once said, “having a second language is like having a second identity” – which I have proven so right. The way all these new words constellating inside my head has actually shape a new way of thinking for me, a new way of seeing life. The way you play with verbs and nouns, formulating them into a different form you were always familiar with. But is it true? Are all these changes I am currently experiencing caused only by my trilingualism?

Is this state where I am feeling very much mature shaped by all the changes I’ve faced, the adaptation I had to get along with, or the new language I have to practice on a daily basis? So if I should write a book about how to be mature, should I write off these three points? Explaining that in order to get mature one should do three things; face changes, adapt into new culture, and learn new languages.

Screw it. I think the answer comes when it comes.

I love my current job so much that it wakes me up every single day, I love it that I couldn’t imagine anything better that I can do at the moment, I love riding my bike to work, I even love it when I come home after the late shift from work because only then I get to see the shimmering lights of lamps as I ride through the city that has fallen asleep, I’m still having a problem waking up and riding my bike for the early working shifts but hey morning sport is surprisingly a good way to start a day! I get along with my colleagues very well, and I have very nice friends in the neighborhood, with whom I spend weekend evenings with, chilling out, talking about all the banalities life has to offer. I guess, for now, after all, it is all enough to call this place and this rather-shifted-identity I am currently having, “a home”.

Being an adult, after all, need one more requirement; to feel comfortable mostly under your very own skin.

Thank you for sparing your time reading this post and, yes, you’re not the one who sometimes feel out of place, wondering 5W + 1H about yourself and the world around you, my dear friend J Let’s enjoy this ride because it always means to be enjoyed. Joie de vivre! Bonne nuit!