Starting Over

You can generally tell how full a person’s life is by the number of keys they have on their keyring. Keys to the house. Keys to the car (which in my case was a moped). Keys to the church. Keys to the office. Keys to the post office box. In one week I went from having all these keys to having none. I’m starting over.

I’m thinking about what it means to have zero keys on my keychain, what it means to start over. It means getting comfortable with a new home. Creating that special space from scratch. Choosing furniture, deciding where all the artwork will go, acquiring those basic ingredients you need to make yourself feel at home. It takes some time to introduce yourself to a new situation. Confronting those cracks in the walls, the dripping faucet, the toilet that doesn’t quite flush right. At first all these dysfunctions glare at you for being the stranger that you are. But eventually you get used to one another and agree to ignore each other’s defficiencies, like old friends.

Starting over also means memorizing a new landscape. It takes a few tries to figure out which is the best way to run all of your errands in less than an hour. Which comes first? The bank? The grocery store? The post office? Sooner or later you fall into an efficient routine, but before you encounter that pleasant circumstance, you have to spend some time just wandering aimlessly and decide that that is okay.

Not only must you learn a new geographical landscape, but there is a social landscape that is a bit harder to forge. At least for me. I do not have that strikingly charismatic personality that draws people to me like a baby labrador. It takes a while for me to get comfortable enough in my new environment to muster up the courage to say “Hi, my name is Annika.” I usually have to give myself little pep talks that involve phrases like “Hun, you are God’s gift to this earth” and “Why wouldn´t they want to know you? You’re HOT.” Ha ha, I jest. But the point is, it’s not always easy to arrive upon a scene and know that new friends are just around the bend. But like with any new adjustment, you’ve just got to give it time. Time heals all things, reveals all things.

I have the advantage of not being a total stranger to the country I now call home. I have visited many times and all of my relatives live within a two-hour radius. But I am still a little apprehensive. What if this country that I have idealized all my life turns out to be so far from what I have imagined? It would be hard to face that kind of disillusionment. And what if I don’t fit in? All of my life I have felt so “other,” no matter where I happened to be living. What makes me think this time around it will be different? I don’t know. I’ll just have to see. The most important thing in this new adjustment is to give myself the time and emotional space I need to do just that—adjust. I tend to expect myself to adapt to any situation right away and berate myself for taking such a long time. But just like my now empty keychain, I’ve got space to fill. I am open to every kind of possibility. Step by step I will fill that keychain with new meaning. A new house, a new job, new friends, a new church, a new life. And you know what? I think I’m really looking forward to it. With butterflies in my stomach. And with my keyring in hand.

The Crisis Years

Whoever said that your twenties are the best years of your life was a big fat liar. If these really are the best years, then I might as well stop living when I turn 30. The twenties are the years when your ideals are shattered, you find yourself moving back in with your parents because you can’t afford to pay rent, and you ask yourself, how the hell did I get here?

If you are one of those independently wealthy people who didn’t have to work your way through university and was offered a $50,000 annual salary job right after graduation because your daddy knows someone who knows someone, then I’m not talking to you. In fact, I don’t even like you. No, this is for all those people who had high hopes for a brilliant start to life out on their own, for those idealistic ones who thought the world was theirs to conquer and have instead fallen flat on their faces.

I am 25 years old and one of those unfortunate college graduates who have had to move back in with their parents. And not because I couldn’t find a job after graduation, but because I decided to do the crazy thing and move to Spain. If I had done my homework before moving, I maybe wouldn’t have chosen to live in Andalucia per se. Not only are salaries really low (the average is 1.000€ per month), but the job market isn’t great, especially now with this seemingly endless economic crisis.

But my parents had moved to southern Spain a few months before I graduated from university and it seemed like the perfect place to start fresh. I had this glamorous notion of getting a job at a UN-related NGO, renting a charming old apartment in Málaga’s historic district and buying myself a Mini to speed down the coastal highway on Sundays. How much more European can you get? It was only after I arrived and started job hunting that I realized how unrealistic my ideas were.

After two months of job searching, I landed a job at one of the airport’s many car-rental desks. But of course I got the job with the local car rental company that was still stuck in the Middle Ages when it came to doing business. I worked there for two and a half years and it was such a bad experience that I don’t even want to talk about it. But it did serve to thicken my skin and bring a greater appreciation for my youth. Seeing the resignation in the eyes of my middle-aged colleagues, knowing that this job was all they had, made me feel so blessed to still have options open to me.

I am a bit of a commitment phobic and I get nervous when the choices I make start closing in on me, leaving me little room for escape. But then I think about all the things that I could do during my lifetime if only I would commit myself to something and see it through all the way, no matter what the outcome was. Because the truth is, even though the twenties are crisis years, they are the foundation upon which we build the rest of our lives. These are the years to take risks and make mistakes. If we play it safe now, we’ll regret it later and perhaps make rash decisions that will be harder to get out of as we grow older.

Zora Neale Hurston once wrote, “There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” The decade that follows college graduation is one full of questions, shattered ideals, financial imbalance, and oftentimes disillusionment. They are years of taking risks and picking ourselves up off the ground. Again. And again. But hope lies in the future, in what is not seen but imagined. And someday we’ll be able to look back at these crisis years and smile, knowing that in hindsight, life is just a series of decisive moments that eventually get us somewhere.

My grandfather said to me recently that it was during those personal desert times that he made the connections that would prove the most significant 10 years down the road. It could be a person he met or something he did or a thought he had, but he wouldn’t realize until much later how important that dry season was for him. Ironically, it is often in our barrenness that we bring forth the most fruit. But it takes time. Nothing happens overnight. So I say BRING IT ON. Crises never last and eventually we will see the light at the end of the tunnel. And no, it won’t be the light of an oncoming train. It really will be then end of the tunnel.

Roadside Assistance

Last weekend my friend and I had planned on spending Sunday morning on the beach. We had spent the night at my boyfriend’s house, watched the Eurovision contest, taken a midnight walk, and the next morning when we got to the car to drive to the beach, we realized the lights had been left on, and sure enough, the car didn’t start.

Now, I have to say that my friend handled it admirably. If it were my car that wasn’t starting, I would be cursing my carelessness and swearing trilingually. She however remained calm, called the car’s owner, then called roadside assistance. A long, hot hour later, the guy arrived, jumped the motor, and asked for her signature. A happy ending to a disappointing Sunday morning.

Today I was sitting down to eat lunch after a frustrating morning at work, trying to hold back my PMS-and-other-life’s-little-complications induced tears when the phone rang. It was my grandfather calling from Sweden to say thank you for that (very short) email I’d sent him earlier this morning. Sidebar: Old people can be really great or really troublesome. My grandfather is of the former category. He loves life, loves God, loves his family, loves the computer. It really doesn’t take much to make the guy happy.

Anyway, he calls me with a most encouraging word about how whenever he’s felt down, in the dark, depressed and disillusioned, God has always worked something in his life that has only made sense years later. No matter how grim the situation looks now, God is working in the background.

I thought about the car in need of a jump start. For the past two years I’ve felt like a dead battery in need of some roadside assistance. Even though I had to wait an hour for the towtruck to arrive, it did get there eventually. That call today was like a jumper cable to my dead battery. As soon as we hung up, I started crying, thanking Jesus for knowing and giving me exactly what I needed right now. My problems are still not solved, my prayers are still unanswered. But I know the towtruck is on its way. Our Daddy knows exactly what we need and His timing is so much better than ours even though it’s so hard to accept. I know He’s working in the background and I have faith that the best is yet to come.