Have I lost it?

Life can change in such sudden ways that it can be difficult to bear, happening so quickly and so drastically that it challenges our sense of control and reminds us just how little we have. 

In the last month, and particularly the last three weeks, my life has shifted around so much I can barely keep up:

First, I got the news that I was selected as an alternate for the Fulbright, which I decided to take for the sake of my sanity as meaning I didn't get it, which, a week later, was followed by being told that I had been chosen after all. Then my boyfriend and I broke up, and related to that incident, I lost my apartment. Not too much later, I decided to leave New York a month earlier than I had planned, and on the same day, my mom called to tell me that they had induced my step father into a coma. Next, I got my apartment back and my step father woke up. But he ended back in the intensive care unit a few days later. Today I learned that he will be going home under hospice care.

To be very plain: I feel like I'm going crazy right now. I feel absolutely crazy. Not in any big way. In little ways. In the words I hear myself use and what I talk about these days. In the little decisions I make: to eat that Snickers bar when I normally would say no, to have that extra drink after my friends say they're going homes, to not be able to sleep when it's time to turn out the light and then not be able to get up the next day to do some errand I thought was important. Afterward, I try to beat myself up over these things. I try to harangue and lecture myself: “Why can’t you get it together?? You’re doing well enough. You’re almost going along as if nothing’s wrong. Just keep going, keep living, and you’ll be fine. You’re so close to fine, why can’t you just be it?” And I stop almost before I’ve really begun, realizing it’s not worth the energy, realizing I don’t even really have the energy.

I know this sounds a bit morose, and I can tell you, it's definitely not enjoyable. But I'm getting through it. Things are going to get better. And I don’t mean this in the way people often tell themselves and each other. I know this for a fact. I can actually see the light at the end of the tunnel. Soon, I will be in a new land with so many people to meet and things to see and do. I'll be doing things I love for a livable wage for the first time ever in my life! For the first time ever, I won’t be working some sort of day job in order to do what I really care about. No proofreading financial documents, no waiting tables, no working retail.

Did you think I could resist?

Because, you see, you can’t decide to make a big change in your life without it having consequences. These decisions we make—to change a career, to move to another country, to leave behind everyone you know, to trade roots for wings—come in like wrecking balls. They smash everything to bits because things have to fall apart so they can be reshaped into something new. It entails pain. And confusion. And fear. These are the things that come when you let go of everything that came before. Being stripped of what you used to tell yourself who you are and having to see what is actually there. Who is Adam if he no longer lives in New York? Who is Adam if he actually enjoys his job? Who is Adam if he has to start all over again in a new place? And then do that over and over for the next couple years?  These questions have answers not in words but in movement, in action. It's time to be brave.

Yes, I'm nervous, but that's okay.

When I tell them I'm going away, people, of course, ask all sorts of questions, but one always comes up no matter how well or little the person knows me: Are you nervous? My stock response is, "I'm more excited than anything," and it seems people write it off as me being naive because, despite these dark circles under my eyes and my pitch black sense of humor, I somehow still manage to come off as a sweet, innocent, optimistic sort of person. Go figure. But let me share a little secret with you, dear readers:

Yes, I'm nervous. I'm nervous as hell.

I think normally people ask this in the context of Colombia's reputation for not being the safest country to travel to, and in that respect, I am not nervous. I have full confidence that the Fulbright people in Colombia as well as the ones here in the States have our safety at the forefront of their minds and will not let anything happen to us. We have to follow some basic rules such as informing them of any travel and, for the most part, avoiding any sort of ground travel in favor of going by air, but I'm really glad to have what I see as a resource for traveling within the country. Who knows, maybe they can also give me tips on how to find cheap airfare while they're at it?

What am I nervous about? For starters, trying to make friends, which can be tough when you don't know a single person. Then there's not having danced salsa since high school and only looking good doing so because of Luisanna Rodriguez telling me what to do all the time, which wouldn't normally matters two bits except for Santiago de Cali is the self-styled "salsa capital of the world." To a lesser degree, trying to find an apartment, though I truthfully can't imagine it being any worse than New York where you have to give a deposit; first, last, and sometimes second or more month's rent; pass a credit check; have a guarantor and then sign away your first born male child to secure an apartment. But above everything else, I'm nervous about adjusting to the little daily things that can really add up.

If Ryan Gosling and Ellen came out with their
own "¡you can learn salsa, gringo!" video series,
I would soooooo buy it.

If you were around when I was still making videos from Spain, you might recall a certain little moment of frustration and hopelessness in a giant park that I couldn't find my way out of and eventually missed two classes that day as a result. It was no good. Then there was the frustration with what I perceived as needlessly complicated procedures for securing a monthly Metro pass or the maze like streets of the city that I never fully understood, or the need to journey to the one Corte Inglés that carried seitan in all of Madrid to have some sort of significant vegetarian protein intake. Those little daily life frustrations can add up, especially when you make one fatal mistake: you try to live the lifestyle you had in one location when you're in another one. It was only in my last months there that I decided to let go of the lifestyle I had become accustomed to in New York in favor for something that was a bit more madrileño, and I regret how late in the process I allowed myself to grow into my new home.

One thing that has recently caused me to be more nervous is the end of my relationship with my boyfriend, who had originally planned to go with me. It became obvious after a while that it would put more stress on us that wouldn't be good for him or me. I won't mince words and say that knowing he would be with me was a great comfort, and now that things have changed, I'm a bit more nervous than I was before. But the fact of the matter is that my desire to go and do this, to see the world, to gain experience in an upper level academic environment, to improve my Spanish, and learn about Colombian culture all conspire together to overpower that fear. It's there, asking to be heard, but in a chorus of so many voices, it can't focus on it for long. None the less, it's hard not to feel like I'll be leaving a bit of myself back here. When I think about him, that he's no

Le Petit Prince et Le Renard

longer part of my life, that we won't be able to share these experiences together, I feel something strange, like an amputee feeling limbs they no longer have. He was my partner in crime, and now, having to pull a solo heist in a foreign land, I feel a bit daunted. He was and always will be one of my favorite people in the world, and I hope we'll stay in contact even after I go, and I'll bring him news of what's happening in the southern hemisphere. It reminds me of the TV series adaptation of the Little Prince and his rose, writing letters back to his home planet to share all the things he saw and did. As the fox said to Le Petit Prince, "Tu deviens responsable pour toujours de ce que tu as apprivoisé." ("You will always be responsible for that which you have tamed.") And in that way, we'll always be connected to each other, as two hearts that, in some way, tamed each other.