Summer in Germany

As a child, I spent most of my summer holidays in Germany. I remember those months in Germany sunny and warm. Once in a while there was some rain, and my sister and I would sit, bored out of our minds, inside the house, and read, or paint, or build some jigsaw puzzles. At the end of the day we would go with dad for a bike ride for one or two hours, around the golf fields at Neuhof. When I look out of the window this summer, I barely see the sun. While the temperatures are completely ok for me (around 20C), it is not summerly warm, and it rains multiple times a day. One could say this summer reflects my inner feelings, and the rain is just a sign for my tears: Just like it rains almost on a daily basis, I cry almost every day. 

I have always felt ashamed of myself for crying: it is a sign of weakness, of vulnerability, and to myself I am not allowed to show myself weak or vulnerable to anyone. Over the last 5 years there were maybe 4 or 5 times when I cried without control in a different place than my appartment: one of them was the day Forthy died, the other were very emotional moments at work, and I cried sitting by myself in a meeting room, or at the smoker's area. This past weeks however there has been a change, and in my opinion, a change for the worse. Tears now come to my eyes when I look around myself, and find myself in Germany, when I walk every morning from my car or train to work, and realize I am not dreaming, and I am really in Euskirchen, and when I sit in my car and find myself forced to drive back to Cologne, to spend one more evening sitting in the living room watching TV, smoing, or studying by myself. The most humilliating situation came last friday, when I was sitting at my desk and started crying, and one of the guys who sits near my desk had not left the office yet and realized I was crying. He did not say anything, neither did I, but I don't think I'll be able to face him this week, or ever again: He has now seen what a weak and immature person I am, and he won't have any trust on anything I do. Why would he trust the work of someone like me?

Days at which the sky is blue and the sun shines have a positive effect even on my depression. When I see the sun shine I remind myself that there must be a way out of my situation, that there are opportunities to get out of Germany for ever. However, the sun is not visible frequently, it comes and goes, and the same unstability is now in my soul: During one single day I go up and down multiple times. A word, a gesture, or just an email can throw me from one extreme to the other. everybody has realized, my boss compleains all the time, and regardless of my efforts to control it, I am failing miserably. What does this mean for my "career"? Is it even worth it for me to keep pushing, or should I give up already, and find myself a guy willing to marry me so I get a green card in the US? Do I have any chances inside the company to be relocated? I cannot see why the company would be willing to invest in someone like me, someone weak and unstable. I love the company, the values it stands for, and if I could make a wish I would remain in the company while relocating to my beloved Boston, but I think it might be time for me to face reality and aknowledge the copmany might not want to keep me, and I should be looking at ways to go back to Boston on my own. With the same frequency clouds cover the sun this summer, my hopes of going back with the company sink. 

I am still working in getting myself under control, in not crying, and in spending as much time as possible busy, studying and working, and just not thinking. I am working hard in not letting words- written or spoken- get to me, and not feeling anything that is said to me is personal so I don't break down at work. I just don't know how much strength I have left, and I fear there is none left. I need to hold on to the hope that I will see my good friends from Boston, L. and V., at the end of August. Maybe then, spending some time with people I know care for me, people who make me feel I am worth  being alive and I am not a complete waste of oxygen in this planet, I will be able to make it through this summer. 

Destiny

The popular song "Que sera, sera", written in the mid 50s, expresses what I have been telling myself over the last half decade regarding my life: What will be, will be. The dreams I once had a a girl have long since abandoned me, and there are few and emotional times now, when they come back and remind me of what I once hoped to achieve in life. Some of those dreams depended fully on me, other only partially. What they all have in common now is that I have given them up.

I wanted to dedicate my life to medical research. As a 10 year old I use to mix different things, liquids and food, and observe over days what happened. I loved to wear white coats, and put on goggles, and pretend I was a scientific. I held the dream of investigation, no longer in medicine but in engineering, until I was over 20, when I still tried to get into a PhD program. I only got into the MSc, which would still have opened the door to a PhD later on, but by then I was scared of what could be if I failed, and decided to take the safest option I had at the time, and accept the job offer.

I wanted to be recognized as an athlete either in tennis, or in rollerblading, and much longer ago in gymnastics or horseback riding. Gymnastics I gave up, because the girls in my class were much better than I was and made fun of me, horseback riding because I developed allergies to horses, and tennis and rollerblading cause I gained too much weight, and once again people laughed at me. Giving those up and dedicating all efforts to those activities for which fat girls were accepted (also known as nerds) was much easier.

Academically I re-shaped my dreams to fit the image that I considered was the way to be accepted by society. I do love engineering, physics and math, and I do love reading, however, besides of reading, neither engineering nor physics belong to my childhood dreams. They have brought some sort of fullfilment in my life, and as long as I don't remember what the real dreams were, they remain my passions.

As a person I dreamt of finding the "right" one, and get married by 27 and become a mother by 30. I am now 27, and have not found him, which automatically delays any dreams of motherhood. While some could say to this topic that you cannot accelerate your future, I must admit that in the last 5 years I have taken myself out of the game, and have worked on not getting to know anybody. I am not sure if my "intimidating" character is a consequence of this effort, it is in any case very helpful.

I dreamt of belonging to a clique. I have some friends, spread over the world, and I was lucky enough to belong to a clique for about 2 years of my life while in college. After leaving college I realized that those 2 marvelous years had been an exeption, and that I simply make friends with people all of which belong to a clique in which I don't fit. I now am thankful for my friends, even if it means that the opportunities I have to see them are limited as I simply don't belong in their groups.

The dreams of my past are thus gone, there is however a newer dream I have built over the last years: Moving back to Boston and starting a new life, a stable an permanent life, there. Currently I am facing a "crisis" with two potential outcomes: giving up that newer dream, or going for it. There are things I am used to I might lose (vacation and flexibility), and the thought of losing them and not feeling fulfilled draws me into overthinking mode. I think I love Boston as the city it is. I cannot deny the memories I have, as well as the friends I left behind there, most likely have an influence to my emotions regarding Boston, however, I believe that there is more to the city than friends and memories. In Boston I feel alive, I am not intimidated by the people around me walking on the street, and when I walk I don't have the need of having my hands in my pockets and looking to the floor. There I am not ashamed of myself when going to the movies on my own, or for a drink. I feel home, and a sense of happiness invades me every time I see the Charles river, walk on Boston Common, or sit next to the Ocean in the Columbus Waterfront Park.

I am now working on going away from Que sera, sera. My destiny will come, yes, but I feel I need to act to bring it to me, and I need to start by making a decision so I can go after the one dream I still have not given up. 

Papam

Papam, my parent's housekeeper and my sister's and my nanny, is a hard worker woman, who treated us like her own children, with love and respect, and at the same time discipline, and was there for us when we needed her.

Papam, whose name is Amparo, started working with us before my sister was born, around 1986. She has two daugthers of her own, older than my sister and me by a few years. Her girls were her life, and she had two jobs in order to support her girls through school, and offer them the opportunities denied to her in her youth.

Despite of her efforts, life played a trick on her, and both girls became teenie mothers, leaving Papam with the feeling of being a failure: How could it be, she wondered, that both girls got pregnant at the same time, when the older one was 18 and the younger one 14, and gave birth with a week difference? How could it be that the girls had not learnt in their childhood that a child is no guarantee to "tie" a man, when they had grown up without a father?

When I look back I see two ungrateful girls (now grown up women), who never appreciated the education they were getting, nor did they appreciate the guft God had given them in their mother.

Today is Papam's birthday. She is turning 55, and is a grandmother of 4 or 5 children. She has been in charge of raising one of them, as her youngest daugther left home, and her son behind, when she moved in with a new boyfriend. Papam has worked over the last 16 years to raise this boy, now a teenager, who seems to be a good student and will graduate high school soon. Her daugthers are no longer there for her, and of her grandchildren, only the one she has raised is there. I called her to congratulate her, and her voice told me how happy she was of hearing my voice, how it filled her to see that both my sister (who also called) and I remember her and her birthday.

It has been around 12 years since she stopped working for us, but we haven't been able to break the contact: she is part of our life, she took an active role in raising us and helping us become who we are, and I like to think that it wasn't her fault the path her daugthers chose, as I cannot imagine how she could be such a good influence for my sister and for me, and not for her own kids.

New Life

Although the last couple of weeks at work have been hell, I am pretty happy they have happened (and are still). I have always known how important it is for me to have a routine to follow, and how much I love learning, and the problems at work have led me back into working a routine for myself out, bringing me again close to things I value and had at some point let out of my life.

Sundays now involve church. It requires me to wake up latest at 930, so I can have breakfast before heading to church in Spanish. It had been years (around 10) since I went at least once a week regularly, and I am enjoying listening to the priest, to those words familiar to me from my childhood, and to the intepretations.Sundays now also involve- if available- Fromula 1 races. I lve watching them and cannot come up with why I stopped over the last 3 years. It is over now though, and I will be up at 6am tomorrow to watch the race.

I am back to the gym as well. 3 times a week, and always on the same days unless I have German class. Tuedays, Thursdays and Saturdays are gym days. I am still only on cardio, but plan to move to Step and give Zumba a try in the next weeks. I am sure it will be fun.

I felt horrible when I received my results from my German test saying I failed the Essay. However, now I feel lucky I failed. I decided to take some classes, and go now every second week to a private 2 hour lesson. I am re-taking the essay in May and will pass this time. In the meantime, I have homework to do during the week: Grammar, Essays, etc. I spread them over the days, and have started going to my favourite place to study, Starbucks, to do homework.

The uni semester will start soon, and since I know I will struggle with the language, as all the psychological terms I know are in English and not German, I have started reading a book over General Psychology in German, which I read on the train on the way to work. The days I go to the gym I drive, the rest I take the train, and taking the train gives more structure to my life.

I still love reading, jigsaws, writting and travelling, and use my free time in them. I have started to enjoy my life again. True, I am back to working from home (for real work), working on strategies to apply at work, analyzing emails and preparing answers, and also reading books recommended by my boss, and books about coaching and other topics that I think will help me overcome the difficulties at work, but this working from home does not feel like work, feels more like school and I enjoy it.

Answers

There are days in my life in which I look back and only questions come to my mind: Who am I? Why am I here? What is the point of living every day? Why am I the person I am? Could I have been somebody different had my childhood and teenge years been different, or was I doomed to become the grown up I am?

Today, and almost every work day over the past month, have been these type of days. I find myself confronted with an environment I don't feel capable of mastering, and the more I try, and fail, the more I feel overwhelmed and not suitable for the assignments I have been given.

For those who know me it is not new to hear that I don't show myself the way I am, and that I am an overly sensitive person, who can be almost destroyed by anyone. My age has not provided me with the wisdom to block people from hurting and destroying me, which gives me the only option of hidding behind a facade that shows me as a stronger person than I actually am. It is thus no surprise thatI also reapply this strategy from my private life in my work life.

Up to now I feel I have been successful: almost 5 years into the job and still most of the people around me don't know how I am, while I have been able to deliver my job as expected. True, I have not made many friends, but the few I've made I treasure, and I still feel lucky.

In the past weeks, however, the rules of the game have changed. I struggle at work, as I get requests like "be more friendly" without further explanation. I fear I have never learnt to be friendly, and I have no idea how to react to the request. If I ask what is meant, I get an " I don't know, just more friendly", which is just as puzzling. I get that my facade shows a self confident strong woman that does not exist. The engineer in me is real, but the woman who goes to work does not. And the friendly woman my new colleagues are looking for I have never met.

Questions and questions keep coming to my mind, and I spend all my free (non crying) time in trying to get answers. Maybe I would know how to be friendly if I had had the opportunity in school, maybe I was never supposed to enter the industry and my destiny was in getting a PhD and spending my life in a lab looking for some nanoparticle, maybe the people I went to school were right and I should not have insisted in living a normal life, finishing school in a regular school and going to college, or maybe, just maybe, the person who went to university, the relaxed woman who let most people see her the way she was, the woman who had friends and a social life, and was happy and proud of herself was real, and has not yet found her way over the Atlantic.

I do not have questions, and the last weeks at work have brought me back to the edge, and set me for the nth time in my life in front of a crossroads: do I face what's coming to me, and try to master it 'til I drop, or do I get a doctor's note, mentioning an upset stomach 1 day after coming back from South East Asia, which will get me straight to the "Tropical Illnesses Hospital" and keep me locked there until I go home on vacation at the end of the month? I am scared of escaping, Marco's words still hunt me ("Escape is never the safest path"), but at the same time I am scared I can't master ths situation one more time, and give up on myself after all I have fought over the last 15 years...

Book

One of the ten things I want to do in my life is to write a book. I don't have a plan on when to write it, or what about, I only know I want to write one.

Given the fact that there is no clear timeline for one's life, and that winter and darkness often make me wish life wasn't so long, I often wonder why it is that I make no plans to complete the things I want to get done. It might be a good sign, something that says that my desire to shorten my life is only temporary. It might as well be a bad sign, and mean that none of the things I want to achieve move me enough to fight those winter feelings.

Days are now very short, regardless of when I go to work, whether with the train at 6am, or driving at 7am, it is still dark. I get out of work when it's dar already. I only get to see the light when I go for a smoke, which is a sad scenario. The scenario is only worsened by the fact that Murphy is back to ruling my life, and over the past couple of weeks, whatever could go wrong has gone wrong. I would call this a perfect combination for falling into depression, and losing hope. The past couple of weeks have also shown that I have some friends who have the ability to make me feel part of this planet, who make me feel I belong here, and there is a reason for my presence in this place. Hearing what I've been through over the past couple of weeks, which among others includes covering at work for more than one person who decided to stop doing their work, finding out squirrels are hidding their nuts for winter in my car's engine hood, getting caught speeding half a km from my apartment, and having a headache that evolved into migraine, she said I should start writting those events down: Nobody can invent that many lies in a week. R's words made me feel that there is at least one person who cares, and who remembers what plans and dreams I have in life.

I still don't know when I'll write my book, but I do now have a small idea on what I could write about, and it makes me feel a little bit closer to reaching at least one of my dreams.

Commencement

Ever since I was a kid I have been a person who easily breaks into tears. Tears come when I feel sad, happy, angry, disappointed, when I see a movie or read a book that transmits feelings, etc. I have always felt ashamed of this, on the outside I am a strong woman, and in the inside I am just a weak little kid, who often longs for a hug, and who has learnt to feel a hug when written on skype or messenger.

Why am I such a cry-baby? Why can't I keep my feelings to myself, and most of all, why do I long for those friends, in the US, in Colombia, or even here in Germany? Those friends who have made a great and stable life, the way I seem to be unable to make?

While watching Gilmore Girls Season 7 a large number of memories from my senior year came back to my mind, and while DVDs 1-4 were quite ok, upon reaching DVD 5 tears started coming to my mind. That dream I always had for after college that did not become true because I got rejected for my top choice for grad school, and the nightmares, reminding me of the failure I was for not making it, the awkward conversations with the guy I loved about being apart, and whether or not we have made mistakes, and who had made them, the end of college crisis, long hours in the library studying, and those uncomplicated nights with friends, hanging out, or drinking, and with L. watching TV. Where did those college years, the best years of my life go? Who am I? Or better expressed, am I? Since my graduation day I cannot listen to Pomp and Circumstance without crying. I do know Commencement ceremonies have that name because they simbolize a begin, however, as years go by, I get more convinced that mine only simbolized the end of the best part of my life, the end of the life I had dreamt of: A life with friends who cared and supported me, regardless of the situation, friends who would stop studying and go for a drink with me if I was having a difficult time, friends who made me feel worth in this planet, and who gave me the strength to keep moving, and keep living, and not to give up. College was also the last time I thought I could be in a relationship, and be loved and respected (not used as every single guy I've met since then has done), and although it has been now more than 4 years, it hasn't changed.

My graduation day seems to have marked the end for me giving myself a chance as a person, as a woman, who didn't protect herself behind a shell and who showed herself the (extremly) vulnerable way she was.

Commencemet marks the begin of my life as a strong minded engineer, as a woman who has a thick shell and does not show herself the way she is, one that has learnt to rationalize every thought, to avoid showing herself as she is, or that she feels and cares. I consider myself lucky for not being in love, as that would break my shell. I also consider myself lucky for being able to spend hours or days alone, without getting bored, often without saying a word (except when the tv doesn't turn on immediately, or when I am missing a piece of a jigsaw).

Graduation day was an amazing day, and it did mark the begin of my career life, but I womehow think that I'd rather be the woman I was before graduation, that who I am now.