An endless [neverending] summer

Flights, trains, hospitals, ecstatic dancing and near nervous breakdown.

Sep 04, 2024

Sometimes, life decides you don’t just need a lemon or two; you need a whole flippin orchard. It’s taken close to 3 weeks to get this article written.

On the day I’d started, I’d sat on the loo for my morning pee and screamed in shock as a green spider crawled up my arm (a spider which then disappeared only to return two days later and do exactly the same thing again before revealing itself to be, in fact, a grasshopper). That first day continued with me shredding my legs to pieces whole shaving with a brand new Gilette Venus 5-blade razor (a lesson I thought I’d learned after doing the same years ago). It ended with my toddler dunking the TV remote into my glass of water (bye-bye, remote!) and my dog getting into a muddy mess on our evening walk.

All of that happened on a day where my partner was in hospital, where he remained for almost a week. All of that on top of a week of illness and 30+ degree weather, on top of a summer that just kept on giving in its goodness, and by goodness I mean, was Mercury in fucking retrograde, or was it just me?

This summer was supposed to be the kind you remember for the rest of your life, for all the good reasons. With a Sufjan Stevens soundtrack, it was supposed to be spent in England with hazy, sunny days, balmy evenings, World Cup pub viewings, Olympic cheering, Wimbledon watching, south-coast surfing, national park hiking, Sunday roast eating and food market munching. It was supposed to be a summer where my partner saw how life in the somewhere else we always dreamed of could be. Where we could get excited about a possible return to my home country after almost 9 years abroad.

Instead, it’s been summer that has pushed our relationship, my mental health and his physical health to a cliff edge.

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There’s about a hundred things that went wrong from the moment we checked in at Memmingen Airport to fly to London in England at 3am, only to be told we had a hefty four hour delay. From the crap weather to the shock of how incredibly expensive London had become in the mere 4 months since we’d last been there. I could write an entire flipping novel about it (maybe one day I will) and how difficult it was. I honestly believe that, when things feel like a constant uphill struggle, when you’re bashing your head against the wall and the stars are misaligning to give you one hit of bad luck after another, that maybe, just maybe, you’re on the wrong path.

Back at the start of this year, I’d decided that my guiding word for 2024 was going to be ease. Not for things to be easy, but for there to be ease. To have the feeling that things were unfolding with a sense of flow. And this summer has felt the opposite of ease.

Or at least it did, until a couple of weeks ago. Right now, as we’ve landed in the first days of September, the chaos that was England is becoming a distant memory (apart from my dissecting of it in therapy). It’s ironic that ease has come about in the place I was so desperate to get away from.

Maybe it was Ulm being voted the number 1 place to live in Germany1 - and I mean, we do have a billion lakes around us, mountains 45mins away, forests all over, easy access to the rest of Europe and, thanks to this being the top place in Germany to study medicine, amazing healthcare. Or maybe it was thanks to it being voted number 8 on the Forbes list of hidden gems in Europe2 but in the middle of a heavy discussion with my boyfriend, I decided to stop.

Stop running.

Stop chasing.

Stop trying to be somewhere else.

We booked our tickets home and the moment we stepped into our house, I felt that - at home. I truly appreciated the space, the sunshine, the garden, the friends I have, the life I have. And then, when my boyfriend’s health deteriorated and he ended up being admitted to hospital, I felt appreciation for the healthcare we have. Because if we’d have been in the UK it would have been a very different story. And that’s not even mentioning the fuck-awful race riots that we happening.

In totally non-trauma-informed language, I surrendered.

And like with most things, when you stop resisting, things feels easier. Why swim agains the current instead of with it - I’m not a flipping trout. I decided that, at the age of 40, I deserved a break from the struggling that is part of my make-up. I decided to simply use the door, instead of climbing out the window and shimmying down the drainpipe. And life has been mostly good since.

I’ve spent whole days chatting with friends, gone to the lake, dipped in the saltwater pool of our local cafe, danced under a starry night sky in an ecstatic dance event and let my toes play in some sand. I’ve started running, enjoying the balmy evenings as I jog with my dog past cornfields. I’ve started teaching yoga locally again.

And yes, this is still real life. I have a teething toddler who wakes multiple times at night, leaving me so tired that I can sometimes barely stand. My business didn’t make any money for two months. I’ll likely have to pull out of the 2nd Year Fembodiment Training because I just don’t have the uninterrupted time to dedicate to in the way I’d like.

I’ve silently screamed more times than I can count. I’ve argued with my partner and wondered why the heck is this so hard? I’ve looked at my life with preovulatory and premenstrual rage and wanted to burn it all. the. fuck. down.

But through all of that, I feel, deep in my bones that I’m okay. That life is okay. Because right now, in this present moment, it is. All of my loved ones who were alive this morning, still are. I’m going to teach a lovely restorative yoga class later. My partner’s health is slowly recovering and we feel closer than we have for a long time.

So life has delivered a fuck-tonne of lemons this year. Some say that lemons taste bitter. But I (and my little boy) actually quite like the taste of them.

Once you get over the initial tang, there’s some sweetness left behind.

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An endless [neverending] summer

Flights, trains, hospitals, ecstatic dancing and near nervous breakdown.

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