Finding My Place in Berlin

As the final days of my internship come to a close, an all-too-familiar pressure rests heavy on my chest. I felt it when I first sent in my application, I felt it during my online interview process in April, and I most definitely felt it during my first couple of weeks abroad, too. Truthfully, it existed in some small quantity nearly every day this summer, too. 

Living with anxiety is not the fierce battle that self-help blogs and bad therapists make you think it is. I used to treat it like it was, but after nearly a decade spent waking up and going to bed at war with myself, I realized that going about my life with that kind of mentality was only going to wear me down and exhaust me even more than I already was. Living with anxiety is about making choices and finding solutions that make that pressure feel just a little bit lighter. It's like a puzzle -- you have to figure out exactly what fits where in a way that contributes to the bigger picture of your life. 

Needless to say, fitting a two-month long internship in a country over five thousand miles away from home into that puzzle wasn't  easy.

But I didn't sign up for this program because I thought that it would be easy. I did it because my bigger picture includes eventually moving to Germany permanently to be with the person that I love just as much as it includes pursuing a career in my major of choice and having a small army of cats and living somewhere with a balcony where I can grow my own herbs. All of these are conscious choices about what I want my future to look like, and making these choices into reality requires taking the necessary steps to do so. Hard steps, like leaving behind my cat who I love more than life itself, and instead putting myself in a situation where I live every day far, far  outside of my comfort zone.

It wasn't easy, but it wasn't supposed to be, and I didn't want it to be. Get through this,  I thought, and you can get through anything.

And I did.

As the final days of my internship come to a close, and I think about all that lays ahead of me -- packing, traveling, getting on a flight, somehow finding out what to do with my life when I get back to the United States -- yes, there is undoubtedly still that familiar feeling of pressure. But there's something else, there, too, that makes that pressure just a little bit lighter: a sense of empowerment. Because I did  this, and I did it on my own (and, of course, with the help of loved ones both in Germany and in the United States.) I made the choice myself, and I put myself on that plane, and I did it .

If I can do it, reader, then so can you.

If you're like me, then you're probably scoffing at that statement, but suspend your disbelief just for a moment and hear me out. Because two years ago, I'd have laughed in the face of somebody who suggested such a thing to me. But you're different -- you're here. You're curious, maybe, about what it might be like. How it might fit into your own puzzle. If you can see yourself living through the same experience as somebody who's already done it before, maybe somebody like you who struggles to fit together those pieces of your life as easily as everybody else.

Curiosity is where it starts. That's where it started for me, as I found myself falling for somebody an ocean away with what I thought was a crystal-clear idea of the direction my life would go.  What if I did? What if I took that crystal-clear vision of the puzzle in front of me and rebuilt it into something completely different? What if I sent in an application, did an interview, got on a plane, and just did it?  

For somebody with anxiety, it is exceptionally easy to catastrophize. It's a particular bad habit of mine, and I certainly did my fair share of it throughout the process. Making a decision like this felt like pushing a big red button on my life that had the word "EXPLODE" on it. I knew what the button would do. I knew that it would drastically change the big picture of my life that I'd so intricately put together before. But I also thought about how different life would be. How I could spent my evenings curled up with my partner on the couch instead of spending them alone because her time zone was six hours ahead of mine and she had already gone to bed. How I could take my perspective and put it into something bigger. How I could take that vision of reality that I had been fantasizing about and make it my own. 

So I hit the button. And guess what? Nothing exploded. That big scary label was one I had put on there myself. Things certainly looked  different afterwards, but that's exactly what I'd wanted, wasn't it? To make a change, no matter how big or how small, and to grow from it.

I've done a lot of growth in the last two months. I've learned more about myself and what I want to do and how I want my future to look. I've learned about my degree and how it can be put into daily life. I've learned about Berlin, and Germany as a whole. All of these are not things you can learn from a textbook, nor from a blog post written by somebody who's done it themselves before. They're things you can only learn by hitting that button. By crafting together that piece in a way that fits best for you, and putting it into place yourself. 

I found more than just people and food and new experiences in Germany. I found my place. I found where I wanted to be, and I put myself there. It was liberating, terrifying, empowering, life-altering, and a million other things, and I'd do it again, over and over, no matter how many times that button is put in front of me. 

Change isn't easy. It never will be, and it wasn't meant to be. But it is necessary, and if you seek it out yourself, you may just find out it's everything you've ever wanted and more.

So hit the button. I dare you.