The Champagne Soapbox

Going to Germany. Well, as I’m writing this I’m on the way there. Everyone was excited to hear I’m going, and they tried to pass some of their emotions through the phone via change of tone, but I couldn’t become excited. Why the fuck am I not excited? I’m very fortunate that I’m wanted, needed, enough to have to make the day trip to visit.

I’m shaking at the airport from anxiety. I’m not very well traveled, it’s a new thing in my life. It was once a thing that was pinpointed as my downfall, almost shoved in my face, being a homebody by default development. For a while, I would wake up to the start of a movie I’ve seen before though all days come to a perfect conclusion- one that you know how it ends and how it begins again. How lovely it is to be rained upon by sweet nothing, that a predictable day is the pit of your depression. To be missed (by my cat mainly) with intention of goodness and not for salacious reasons because we’ve all moved on (i’m a free agent, let’s do it). To be shaking in an airport not because you’re scared of airplane food but because I’m terrified of where my mind going to go for 10 hours. You won’t believe the amount of times I researched quotes about “jumping over the boundary of fear” and “all great things are the on the other side of being uncomfortable.” Mumbling to myself cliché words in an airport reminding myself to stay grounded while being one of the highest in the air.

On a normal day, I can’t help but to distract myself with tik toks to shorten my span for a minute. I look away from conversations that last longer than thirty minutes. Oh to be stuck in a drunken hometown bar living scenarios I’ve played in my head twice over for more than a few hours. I get off the plane that lasted a bit longer than ten hours just to see that no one has sent me a tik tok (pitiful), started a conversation (awh), or drunkenly typed out something they regret the next day (i wish).

I tell my friends that I really don’t mind being alone, yet I yearn for them today to assure me that I’m not. I’m fine with being alone, for a while it was my preference, the time before that I couldn’t think about my next breath before that someone reminded me. Sometimes I replicate that idea of someone, being the sad girl who just dreamt of being the girl I am now, just as an excuse for poor present behavior. Maybe I relive my healed trauma for the sake of experiencing emotion that takes me out of my healed, dissonant contentment.

Is there something to be hungry for when your plate is already full? Am i so starving to the point that I’m just used to this empty stomach feeling? Staring into an abyss of algorithms, staring through the person explaining to me how they operate, them staring at me and seeing the girl I still don’t quite understand yet. What do you think of her? Is she worthy of a swipe, a quick smile across the bar, a friendly hug paired with a “How is your mom doing?”, a glimpse of her getting into the car with someone else, an explanation of how you can’t seem to pay attention to her more than you can a football game or the girl pouring your next at that hometown bar?

I’m still on this flight, thinking about how I’m hungry for something but I can’t understand to admit who… I meant what. One thing about me is that I’m too creative. Before you spend your time giving a response, which could be my reward, I’ve already pictured the conversation we will have the next ten hours. How is it so far? Jet lag is a bitch, but damn you’re just as exhausting. Why aren’t you hungry? Have I fed you enough? What if I put it in a 60 second loop enough to make it last for the rest of our years together? Keep scrolling for content. I’ll be sure to provide it.

I’ve been watching Friends on the dash of stranger adjacent of me. I cant hear the sound, but I’m picturing what their mind is reacting to in real time. I know people are doing the same to me. I bet they’re guessing my age shorter than a few years, picturing me waiting to text some guy that I made it safe, that I’ve traveled enough to know the exact plane model and meal they’ll serve me. I’ll choose a movie that they’ll expect me to watch, some American feminist she is watching Little Women and not crying at the part where she denies Timothee Chalamet but wipes tears when the main character runs away from it all. We’re much more alike than I want to be.

I had multiple thoughts on this trip of running away and becoming an anomaly, my true yet completely false essence. I walked around the town at night and said thank you in different languages to see their reaction; do they know I’m the foreign one? I’ve imagined myself being a pinpoint on the globe and having my friends scroll to Europe to find me independent of their time. I’ve prepared my responses for them in advance when they ask how it was.

Before this trip, I only asked what I could give, when really all I need was to be fed myself. Were you starving? I actually just ate. I opened my arms and received as much (metaphorical/actual) food as I could. The waiter put his hand on my back and we walked through the cobblestone and he asked if I ate well. I was so full that night. I looked around the city with this man’s hand on my back, and I realized that I actually was always full. I am SO full that I poureth my cup until it drips over onto the counter to the floor and got my feet wet. My feet are wet, your socks are wet, and here I WAS asking YOU if you would like more water. Asking people to participate in my communal drowning for the sake of not feeling alone in my quarter-life crisis. Here, I became satisfied.

In fact, I assume that position so much of others that it’s way easier to talk about the struggles of my generation than to have a ten-minute elevator pitch of who I am and what I do over dinner with whomever I’m trying to impress. Just get to the good stuff before my stomach starts growling. I guess that’s the point of being in a foreign country. You don’t really have time to cater to others, and you really are stripped to your basic needs until your feet are dry and you can walk around confidently knowing you are the inside the mind of the outsider (over thinker, under appreciated, equally oblivious).

I’m coming to terms with the fact that allowing people and experiences and culture to share their portions with me is why my plate is full. Or at least, that’s why I want it to be full. Not full of empty thoughts of who I will be in a year, what her occupation will be, how will she make it through the day without becoming the person whose kids ask her when dinner is ready.

I’m on the returning flight looking straight forward at my own dash. I look through the movies and imagine what it would be like to be in my own bed, in my own apartment, in my own shared city of people who moved to get away from everyone who’s plates were empty. No one knew I was on this flight, I didn’t want people to ask me questions just yet. I wanted to enjoy the simplicity of having a perfect cup full of fulfillment and a plate complete with white sausage and Moroccan waiters who get paid a living wage and Prosecco at hotel bars with people who address you as “Ms. Champagne.” I really loved the persona I built over this trip, until I realized I was the one who created it. I’m the one with a cleaner closet, the one with the personality to want conversation with people she doesn’t know, and to embrace the mystery she finds in herself. That’s so cheesy.

When I would walk away from a counter, I know I was being noticed for my accent. I liked being noticed in a foreign country, at least the positive side of it like getting discounts at places or giving tips to waiters like they don’t expect. I think of if I reminded them of someone, or if they imagined my life being completely different than what it is in reality. When my flight back was, if I even had a ticket, or if there was a guy waiting to text me when I land, or if I was the American type of feminist that agrees with the politics of her state.

As soon as the plan wheels touched gravel, that LONG flight, my cup shakes a bit and my food falls over. It’s empty, and all of a sudden I’m filled with the urge to experience it all over again. Instead of asking others to make me full again, I have wait to get back on the aisle seat and see what will fill it. Go somewhere else other than my grudge of a room that I imagine my self melting away in. Talking with strangers and buying their art from the side of the road and asking them what their mom made them when they were little and touching ancient architecture and realizing WE ARE ALL THE SAME AND THERE ARE MORE OF US OUT THERE!

In simple, just for the sake of giving an unscripted response, it was amazing. It was exactly what I needed. To be alone, without knowledge or understanding of culture, to be a fly on the wall and have so many people guessing where I bring my buzz to. To be the center of attention in my mind to the point that I distort my perception of other peoples perceptions of me. People watching to a psychological, slightly mentally ill (the fun kind), extent.

If I got anything out of this trip, it was the allowance of ignorance and being blissful to things I don’t quite understand, even my own emotional depth. Realizing that I love being a fly on the wall so much that also I’m worried no one will notice me. Allowing myself to indulge and become full of other people instead of being so full of myself and my quest to solve life all the time. Finding out that it gets dark early over there, the food is better, and that you much prefer the 4-hour dinners with sparkling water and wine from next door rather than the boring drive through with five dollar boxes. There were lots of things I took from this trip. I indulged in it all.

This may explain why I’ve been absent for a while. I’m actually happy, maybe a little too inspired, waiting for another adventure that’s in the form of a person place or thing. I’m so glad I had the opportunity to go overseas, to have a job that allows me to work with people and know people who live a life different than me, and to have the urge walk alone in a different country and become a little more satisfied not following a path popularly traveled to find my own sense of individuality.

I mean come on, Germany was amazing. I was in a huge life rut before then, dedicating time to wrong individuals out of boredom and being revived by beer and roasted pumpkin.