The Abort Button I Never Pressed

August 2007: I left Bavaria. That’s the short version. The longer one involves heartbreak that had long since curdled into something worse—not sadness exactly, more like the particular stillness of a life that has stopped moving—and the decision, eventually, that standing still was its own kind of catastrophe. So I packed everything and moved to Berlin, alone, telling myself it was provisional. That I could press abort at any time. That this was a test, not a commitment.

I never pressed it. The city absorbed me week by week, through suspicion and then through something like reluctant belonging. Tomi arrived early in the story—as chaotic and loyal a friend as I’ve encountered—and suddenly there was an anchor, even if that anchor was held together mostly by goodwill and good madness. Jenny and I ran headlong into something beautiful and comprehensively doomed; those relationships always burn brightest and leave the least behind. And Mona, who felt like a mirror, like someone who understood the specific frequency of my strangeness—she was suddenly gone, from this city and from the world, in a way I still haven’t fully made sense of.

A year of that. People who know exactly what they want standing next to people who have no idea. People arriving, people stuck, people who’ve decided that stuck is fine if you’re stuck somewhere good. I met colleagues who actually inspire me. I learned what it means to live in a place rather than just occupy it.

Now a second training year begins. I’m finally getting a proper apartment of my own. The cycle turns, slightly wider. A small, messed-up Bavarian in Berlin—round two.