being here
The end of summer. It feels as though June and July, rather than trundling past in their usual procession, were snatched out of existence, with August watching, fearfully.
June was spent frantically doing research into the exact logistics of my desired career path. It feels obvious, now, that none of this would be straightforward, and that it's unrealistic to try to change careers as well as country, residence, and job, all at the same time, and expect every one of those to work out. Job first, then visa and apartment, and my other aspirations can wait until those are settled. You can only make so many leaps at once.
The working world is strange. Sometimes it feels as though the days are doomed to be exactly the same, turning into each other like the spinning of a wheel. There is no progress, only the wearing down of edges.
When I graduated I was desperate to leave this country as soon as possible, and I spent all my free time either job searching or researching law schools. By July, I hadn't felt properly rested since graduation. I was exhausted, and discouraged, and I gave myself permission to do absolutely nothing when I came home from my job. I badly needed for myself what time I had.
August has been better. I finally have a sense of knowing what I'm doing at work. It has also dawned on me that my life could be substantially worse than stress and anxiety at my day job. My life is very stable and I have time for things I enjoy.
It's been a year now since I left Bavaria. I cried when a friend met me in the airport, because I felt like I was being peeled away from the life I wanted. Having found a missing piece of myself, I was being forced to give it back.
I cried in the knowledge of being stuck here until I had my bachelor's degree and could figure out how to return.
Now I've graduated. Part One is checked off. Sometimes the anxiety pervades me, that I'm not doing enough, that I haven't gotten any closer to leaving than I was after graduation. But no. I continue to work, and I continue to get paid, and that is getting closer to my goals. Part Two is just going to take a while.
I've also come to appreciate this time spent back in my hometown. The little art fairs, the farmer's market. Even seeing people I knew in high school, a few years older than me, all properly 'launched' but still close by. One is a teacher, the other runs a local coffee shop. Both giving back to the community.
In Bavaria, there are these little yellow flowers that grow all over the mountainside. I asked an elderly couple what they were called. Schlüsselblumen, the woman replied. In late August, they began turning orange as they dried, but yellow ones could still be found. I pressed some and mailed them to my U.S. self, wanting every trace of Bavaria I could cling to.
On returning to my Midwestern home state, it was a deadening time to be in America. Post-inauguration, five months into all of this. But to my shock, the little yellow flowers between the sidewalk and the curb by the grocery store weren't dandelions, they were Schlüsselblumen. I had simply never looked closely enough at these flowers to recognize them before.
