Syng, så drukner vi stilheden
Today I touched down in Singapore Changi Airport after what can be described as a rather amusing flight and a qarah-filled transit time between Copenhagen and Helsinki. I managed to hold my tears in for a really long time, but I think they are just fighting to come out as they start flowing when someone shows the slightest concern at me missing Aarhus - I got back to 4.2 the night before I moved out and saw Thor in the kitchen, and he only had to ask me how I was doing before I started raining tears. The morning I moved out I was distracted by all the packing and rushing, but the moment he asked me "how you holding up?" was enough to open the floodgates again.
Now I lie here in the bed I haven't slept in for six months, unable to sleep because it is 6:21pm in Denmark and I would be starting to wonder what I want to eat for dinner. I had gotten back home a few hours ago, and started ruthlessly throwing things out from my room that I never used but thought would be nice to keep. And after, as I stepped into my shower, I started doing everything as I did before I moved, step by step, exactly as I did before, putting things where they were, turning to face the door, and so on.
It was then that I realised that I had been living my life out of habit. I had stopped questioning myself, asking myself what I really am doing with my life every day. But that's what habits are - they're actions you repeat so often that you don't even process that you're doing them anymore.
But I've just come back from a country so different from Singapore. I've been exposed to different ideologies, different beliefs, different lifestyles. I've seen what it's like to live independently. I've felt how it is to carve out your own lifestyle, to create a life of your own choosing. And I can't just flow with what life throws at me anymore. I can't just follow what everyone else does; get an honours bachelor's degree in your specialisation from business school, compete for summer internships, get a job related to your specialisation, get promoted, get married, get kids, get money. What if I don't want to do what is prescribed to me? What if I want to go to another country and choose how I want my own life to be? What if I don't want to be another product of a cookie cutter?
I want those things said above; I just don't want them the way it is expected. I don't want to get a marketing job where I have to sit in my cubicle, 9am-6pm, staring at a screen doing things that don't even matter to me. I want a dynamic job. I want a job that lets me travel and that lets me have a work-life balance, in a place where competition for everything isn't as strong. I want to be creative.
The day I moved to Aarhus, it was cold, windy and slightly drizzling. I struggled with two luggage bags that combined weighed more than I did, across pavements that alternated between smooth tiles and cobblestones. I dumped my luggage in a beautifully Scandinavian-designed apartment for the night, and explored the town with Vincent, whom I went to Aarhus with. The daylight grew dimmer and dimmer at 4:30pm, and more and more shops started to close. But as I walked around the cold little city centre of Aarhus, I felt my heart warm.
"America is my country, but Paris is my hometown." Simon Baker quoted this in The Devil Wears Prada. Maybe Singapore is my country, but Aarhus is my hometown.