What happened.
So, it's been a while.
I haven't been not writing because life has been good. I haven't been not writing because life has been bad either. Or because life has been busy, or because life has been boring. The fact is, life has been all of those things over the past months. And I have no idea why I haven't been writing.
It could be that my time over here has slowly started actually becoming my life. And that even when I've had bad days and felt like shit (which has happened), I haven't been so emo in the sense of desperately needing to share my feelings with the world. Which, as those of you who read this in October will note, is an improvement. So I guess in some ways, exactly what I was afraid would happen has started to happen: I have drifted apart from the people I love. And even now, I don't want that to happen. I want to be a part of the world I knew and to fit back into it--and live with the people from it--and go back to my life the way it was before in some ways. But I think that will probably happen somewhat naturally. I think I'll email people who I think or know or someone tells me (hint, nudge, wink) are probably going to be living in Boston to try to figure out the whole living with thing sometime over the next month or so, but I figure the rest will take care of itself.
I mean, really, I haven't given it that much thought lately. Which, also, is an improvement.
Because what I have been doing is finally getting my shit together over here. It's been a slow, painful, erratic, and frankly somewhat accidental process (process may not even be the right word here as it implies working towards something. Drunken stumble may be more like it), so it's not like I've been putting LJ on hold while I figure my stuff out. It just happened.
The great story of my adventure (which it finally is starting to be now: the very adventure and excitement that I had been hoping for and anticipating, rather than just the "experience" that I was inevitably having and had started to settle for) is a plotless wander, but I can mention a few moments or repetitions that have left an impression. By December, it was all getting harder. November is supposed to be the horrible month in Austria (kinda like February in New England), because the weather is awful the whole month, it's dark when you go to work and come home, and somehow that just bleeds into the social world. And there was certainly some of that. It started out pretty well and then crashed a little at a time. My TA friend/something-unclear and I had an unexplained falling-out, I started doing the unthinkable and giving a shit when the students acted like assholes--in general and to me on occasion--the Gleisdorf maturaball was a catastrophic bust, and my German skills seemed even more to be seriously limiting. But the fact is, November was also a pretty good month for me: I went to Prague, which was amazing, then to Budapest, which was also amazing, I started hanging out with the American TA's in Graz (to which I had moved), and I met a few pretty nice Austrians. But by December, all the good things kind of seemed corrupted. I felt excluded by the other TA's (which I was, though not actively), the teaching was getting harder, and I felt a huge divide from the Austrians because my housemates almost never talked to me (the reason I moved in was that I thought we'd hang out all the time) and even the cute Austrian girl I'd met and hung out with a bunch started to get impossible to read. I suck with signals, and she wasn't giving me any. It was a lonely month.
I went home at the end of it, for Christmas, which turned out to be a lot more stressful and unpleasant than it should have been, dominated as it was by a 20 hour delay in London and 4 day delay in receiving my bags (including gifts I brought home). But to be surrounded by people I loved and even more importantly, who loved me, even while we were all dealing with terribly complicated and difficult personal situations, recharged my batteries and gave me some tentative confidence for the coming return to Europe.
Tentative confidence is a great way to put all of this. Because any time I felt happy, or somehow like I was doing well, it was always tentative, always partial, always temporary, always in the midst of an ordeal. And it was like that when I got back too. This confidence seemed to fall apart on that 14 hour trip back into Graz. And the anxiety, that visceral panic that welled up inside me (complete with abdominal muscles involuntarily beginning to cramp) before classes, before meeting "friends" (aren't they supposed to be people you feel comfortable with?), when I felt I'd just done something wrong or offended someone, when I'd think back to times I had ever done anything wrong or offended someone, anytime I was uncertain about something social, it returned. So I spent a lot of my time doing what I'd done all December: staying in my room--usually with the door open so my roommates could come and chat, which they never did--watching American TV on the internet, and sending out the occasional text message to ask if someone wanted to do something, about one in three of which got any response at all, and one in five a positive one. I'd go have a drink with someone once in a while, and by the third beer I'd be explaining that there are good days and bad days, and this is a good one. I might talk about how meaningful experiences like Regensburg were to me, how fondly I remember them but how I know that in actuality they, too, were like this one, full of successes and reverses, an emotional whirlwind full of the same panic and partial relieving happiness in the middle of the ordeal. And I know even now that I do love such parts of life, but it is a strange, perverted kind of love, like a love of war, a love of a tunnel for the light. I love people that can understand it, have had experiences like it that force them to question everything, and whose personality is borne in part out of a time of suffering. I love the moment where I lay on my bed an insomniac, not keeping my ear against the pillow so I wouldn't be rendered anxiously debilitated again by the echoing rhythm of my heartbeat, struggling with myself as I did most of the day to be positive--not content but positive--telling myself what an incredible experience and opportunity I was living, that I am exactly where I am supposed to be, "Hier bin ich. Hier bin ich." A new phrase forever tied with me to this year, to go with "Okay. Okay. Okay," as I had repetitiously insisted, crying with a disgusting abandon, a phrase that I until recently could not say without taking me back in my gut to that moment.
But more than anything, I love this moment now. The one that I know could not have come to be were it not for those months lost in the woods. No, what I love is sitting here, now that everything is coming together. Because I have begun playing poker with the other TA's--the ones that I like. Because last weekend I went to a party that I stayed at until five a.m., drinking heavily and talking boisterously with Austrians about culture, about history, about politics, about everything, and in two languages. Because I went to the Schlossberg with someone I met in Budapest and looked out over the city and saw all of these things in Graz that I want to do, not merely think I should and have an inclination to but that I want to do. Because even when the students don't pipe up with enthusiasm, I still enjoy teaching them, and it doesn't even feel like hit-or-miss or something to worry about. Because next Monday, I'll be playing soccer with some of the Austrians from the party. Because in two weeks I'll be taking a dance class in Bad Radkersburg with a fun American and some terribly interesting people there. Because I'm going to spend a week in a cabin skiing in the Austrian Alps in February and because one of my teachers wants me to come on the school's ski trip to spend the week before that skiing too. Because I feel comfortable and happy hanging out with the Austrian girl I mentioned and am even more comfortable speaking German with her than I am otherwise, and because it occurred to me how happy she is almost every time she sees me. I still need to ask her if she thinks the times we've gone out together have been dates or what exactly our situation is, but at this point, I'd be surprised if she said no (though I've been wrong about things like this before), and what's more I don't even seem to care. Because now, none of these positive moments are just positive moments, or relief in the ordeal or light in the dark. Because now, that well of anxiety and that depression seem to be gone. I know they may come back. I know that there have been times when I've felt almost as well as I do now, and it's been a false summit or just me being positive. But I don't care. I'm not afraid of that now, and it's not because I'm making an effort or because I've accomplished something. It just is.
Something has happened. It didn't happen quickly, and it didn't happen easily. I don't think it even happened because of anything I did. But things are making me genuinely happy at this point, which hasn't been true in a long, long time. It hasn't been true since last May.
So I'll just say that I love you all and although I don't imagine things are going as well for most of you as they are for me right now (or at least by comparison with how they were going three weeks ago), I hope they're close.
So I'll see you all later. And do give me a ring on IM sometime. Or email.
Drake
I haven't been not writing because life has been good. I haven't been not writing because life has been bad either. Or because life has been busy, or because life has been boring. The fact is, life has been all of those things over the past months. And I have no idea why I haven't been writing.
It could be that my time over here has slowly started actually becoming my life. And that even when I've had bad days and felt like shit (which has happened), I haven't been so emo in the sense of desperately needing to share my feelings with the world. Which, as those of you who read this in October will note, is an improvement. So I guess in some ways, exactly what I was afraid would happen has started to happen: I have drifted apart from the people I love. And even now, I don't want that to happen. I want to be a part of the world I knew and to fit back into it--and live with the people from it--and go back to my life the way it was before in some ways. But I think that will probably happen somewhat naturally. I think I'll email people who I think or know or someone tells me (hint, nudge, wink) are probably going to be living in Boston to try to figure out the whole living with thing sometime over the next month or so, but I figure the rest will take care of itself.
I mean, really, I haven't given it that much thought lately. Which, also, is an improvement.
Because what I have been doing is finally getting my shit together over here. It's been a slow, painful, erratic, and frankly somewhat accidental process (process may not even be the right word here as it implies working towards something. Drunken stumble may be more like it), so it's not like I've been putting LJ on hold while I figure my stuff out. It just happened.
The great story of my adventure (which it finally is starting to be now: the very adventure and excitement that I had been hoping for and anticipating, rather than just the "experience" that I was inevitably having and had started to settle for) is a plotless wander, but I can mention a few moments or repetitions that have left an impression. By December, it was all getting harder. November is supposed to be the horrible month in Austria (kinda like February in New England), because the weather is awful the whole month, it's dark when you go to work and come home, and somehow that just bleeds into the social world. And there was certainly some of that. It started out pretty well and then crashed a little at a time. My TA friend/something-unclear and I had an unexplained falling-out, I started doing the unthinkable and giving a shit when the students acted like assholes--in general and to me on occasion--the Gleisdorf maturaball was a catastrophic bust, and my German skills seemed even more to be seriously limiting. But the fact is, November was also a pretty good month for me: I went to Prague, which was amazing, then to Budapest, which was also amazing, I started hanging out with the American TA's in Graz (to which I had moved), and I met a few pretty nice Austrians. But by December, all the good things kind of seemed corrupted. I felt excluded by the other TA's (which I was, though not actively), the teaching was getting harder, and I felt a huge divide from the Austrians because my housemates almost never talked to me (the reason I moved in was that I thought we'd hang out all the time) and even the cute Austrian girl I'd met and hung out with a bunch started to get impossible to read. I suck with signals, and she wasn't giving me any. It was a lonely month.
I went home at the end of it, for Christmas, which turned out to be a lot more stressful and unpleasant than it should have been, dominated as it was by a 20 hour delay in London and 4 day delay in receiving my bags (including gifts I brought home). But to be surrounded by people I loved and even more importantly, who loved me, even while we were all dealing with terribly complicated and difficult personal situations, recharged my batteries and gave me some tentative confidence for the coming return to Europe.
Tentative confidence is a great way to put all of this. Because any time I felt happy, or somehow like I was doing well, it was always tentative, always partial, always temporary, always in the midst of an ordeal. And it was like that when I got back too. This confidence seemed to fall apart on that 14 hour trip back into Graz. And the anxiety, that visceral panic that welled up inside me (complete with abdominal muscles involuntarily beginning to cramp) before classes, before meeting "friends" (aren't they supposed to be people you feel comfortable with?), when I felt I'd just done something wrong or offended someone, when I'd think back to times I had ever done anything wrong or offended someone, anytime I was uncertain about something social, it returned. So I spent a lot of my time doing what I'd done all December: staying in my room--usually with the door open so my roommates could come and chat, which they never did--watching American TV on the internet, and sending out the occasional text message to ask if someone wanted to do something, about one in three of which got any response at all, and one in five a positive one. I'd go have a drink with someone once in a while, and by the third beer I'd be explaining that there are good days and bad days, and this is a good one. I might talk about how meaningful experiences like Regensburg were to me, how fondly I remember them but how I know that in actuality they, too, were like this one, full of successes and reverses, an emotional whirlwind full of the same panic and partial relieving happiness in the middle of the ordeal. And I know even now that I do love such parts of life, but it is a strange, perverted kind of love, like a love of war, a love of a tunnel for the light. I love people that can understand it, have had experiences like it that force them to question everything, and whose personality is borne in part out of a time of suffering. I love the moment where I lay on my bed an insomniac, not keeping my ear against the pillow so I wouldn't be rendered anxiously debilitated again by the echoing rhythm of my heartbeat, struggling with myself as I did most of the day to be positive--not content but positive--telling myself what an incredible experience and opportunity I was living, that I am exactly where I am supposed to be, "Hier bin ich. Hier bin ich." A new phrase forever tied with me to this year, to go with "Okay. Okay. Okay," as I had repetitiously insisted, crying with a disgusting abandon, a phrase that I until recently could not say without taking me back in my gut to that moment.
But more than anything, I love this moment now. The one that I know could not have come to be were it not for those months lost in the woods. No, what I love is sitting here, now that everything is coming together. Because I have begun playing poker with the other TA's--the ones that I like. Because last weekend I went to a party that I stayed at until five a.m., drinking heavily and talking boisterously with Austrians about culture, about history, about politics, about everything, and in two languages. Because I went to the Schlossberg with someone I met in Budapest and looked out over the city and saw all of these things in Graz that I want to do, not merely think I should and have an inclination to but that I want to do. Because even when the students don't pipe up with enthusiasm, I still enjoy teaching them, and it doesn't even feel like hit-or-miss or something to worry about. Because next Monday, I'll be playing soccer with some of the Austrians from the party. Because in two weeks I'll be taking a dance class in Bad Radkersburg with a fun American and some terribly interesting people there. Because I'm going to spend a week in a cabin skiing in the Austrian Alps in February and because one of my teachers wants me to come on the school's ski trip to spend the week before that skiing too. Because I feel comfortable and happy hanging out with the Austrian girl I mentioned and am even more comfortable speaking German with her than I am otherwise, and because it occurred to me how happy she is almost every time she sees me. I still need to ask her if she thinks the times we've gone out together have been dates or what exactly our situation is, but at this point, I'd be surprised if she said no (though I've been wrong about things like this before), and what's more I don't even seem to care. Because now, none of these positive moments are just positive moments, or relief in the ordeal or light in the dark. Because now, that well of anxiety and that depression seem to be gone. I know they may come back. I know that there have been times when I've felt almost as well as I do now, and it's been a false summit or just me being positive. But I don't care. I'm not afraid of that now, and it's not because I'm making an effort or because I've accomplished something. It just is.
Something has happened. It didn't happen quickly, and it didn't happen easily. I don't think it even happened because of anything I did. But things are making me genuinely happy at this point, which hasn't been true in a long, long time. It hasn't been true since last May.
So I'll just say that I love you all and although I don't imagine things are going as well for most of you as they are for me right now (or at least by comparison with how they were going three weeks ago), I hope they're close.
So I'll see you all later. And do give me a ring on IM sometime. Or email.
Drake