It’s 2:22 a.m. in Copenhagen
It’s 2:22 a.m. in Copenhagen.
My sleep is wrecked and I feel the need to connect. I feel this from time to time, an ache that starts low and quiet. It whispers and then it surges in the middle of the night. After I’ve had some rest, I wake up hungry. I suppose in a lot of ways, my hunger is physical and emotional. I’m hungry for nourishment and for connection.
I suppose in a lot of ways, my hunger is physical and emotional. I’m hungry for nourishment and for connection.
That’s the thing about jet lag and travel, your body doesn’t understand that the sun now rises when it thinks it should be setting, and night comes when your body thinks it should be waking. My days feel flipped and so are the aches that normally get drowned in the noise of daily life.
I think this is why I enjoy solo travel. Everything quiets and I can listen. Because normally, in my “real life,” it’s so very hard to listen. I get lost in trying to be the person I’m supposed to be–the responsible one, the one that found success on her own, the one that is unbreakable and hard, the firm one that makes all of the decisions. When in reality, I want to be soft. So soft. I want to be able to break down and be cared for. To allow myself to be held. Why is that so hard? To be held. When did we learn that being held was weak? When were we taught that needing was wrong?
Why is that so hard? To be held. When did we learn that bring held was weak?
My independence has become a cage, one with wide, iron bars that I welded through years of doing life on my own. Having to be tough. Having to be strong. Having to be my own everything. And yet, it seems that women that seek independence look at me with eyes of wonder, wanting to find their own ground to stand on. And they call me brave for walking new lands and traveling alone. I can hear the craving for freedom in their praise. I hold a kind of freedom that is a privilege, one that requires access to financial stability, an American passport, and being unattached to the responsibilities that chain others down. How do I explain to them that being untethered is its own strife? That what looks like freedom externally doesn’t always mean that you are free of your internal cages. Choosing a life like this, one where you have to choose bravery each day, means you don’t feel the safety and comfort of the familiar. It means that you’re often alone.
That what looks like freedom externally doesn’t always mean that you are free of your internal cages.
And so here I am, in Copenhagen, waking up hungry and having the urge to write. My laptop is sitting on a propped up pillow and a Christmas movie is playing with the sound really low. There’s a soft, warm glow from the lamp next to the bed, and I’m in orange pajamas with little black cats on them. I just finished crying and ate grapes with cheese. And now I’m laughing that I have to leave the country in order to cry. Like, who does that? I do. I can hear myself this way, the whispering voice of my intuition gets louder when I’m away. Her voice is a glow in my core. It gets warmer when a decision is aligned to my values and who I want to be, and it twists when I’m excited.
Her voice is a glow in my core. It gets warmer when a decision is aligned to my values and who I want to be, and it twists when I’m excited.
Right now, it feels like one of those old lanterns with a flame inside of it that’s flickering and then steadies. A small golden orb of light, protected by glass and sitting on a small table. Perhaps the table is on a porch outside of a cottage in the middle of the forest during the winter, and it’s guiding me to return home to myself. I’m walking through the forest, shivering in the frigid air, my arms wrapped around myself, but I’m too far in to turn back. The path is lonely and cold, I’m only equipped with the tools and clothing I’ve acquired over time (with therapy), and my legs are tired from walking. I crave for another warm body to walk with me, to understand why the path is important to me, and to walk on their own without having to carry them.
That’s what life and the busy-ness of it does, doesn’t it? It takes us away from ourselves and then it’s hard to come back. It’s hard to back track our steps and find our way to the parts of ourselves that were lost, or diluted, or thrown away in order to fit into the molds we chose. Those molds have required sacrifice and then we live in them and look up one day and realize we’re far from where we thought we’d be. Or we feel that there is something missing. Perhaps it’s a spark or a sense of purpose, or a life outside of the roles that we play.
It’s hard to back track our steps and find out way to the parts of ourselves that were lost, or diluted, or thrown away in order to fit the molds we chose.
Our bodies aren’t supposed to feel the daily anxieties and peaks of stress that we feel now. Those feelings that come when we think we’re supposed to measure up or be worthy. Each day feeling like you have to prove yourself. We force ourselves to make something work because otherwise we’ll be considered failures. And that feeling is mirrored in several parts of life–how you allow yourself to be treated at work is how you allow yourself to be treated in your relationships. How we operate in our partnerships is how we operate with our supervisors. We seek safety and security both in our careers and in our relationships. A breakup feels like getting fired, a bad performance review feels like your partner just told you that they hate that you snore so loudly. Our bodies don’t know the difference between rejection in one part of life over another, they can only experience your change in heart rate or lack of dopamine release.
All of this creates a pattern for me: Copenhagen, jet lag, solo travel, hearing the whispering voice, wanting to be soft, the cage of my independence, seeking freedom, untethered-ness, aloneness, the glow in my core, the cold walk toward the lantern on the porch, finding my way back to myself, daily stress and anxiety, and mirrors of safety and security in aspects of my life. It’s all about connection: the connection to self, to each other, to the things that matter if you were to lose it all, to the things that bring us joy but we left behind, to the things that are yet to find us but we can feel the invisible string pulling it closer, to breathing deeply and filling each centimeter of your lungs with air, to feeling your heart beat to the rhythm aliveness.
It’s all about connection…
Perhaps for me, being away from the daily routine, the people that surround me, and the versions of myself they hold on to, perhaps this is my way of taking a respite to connect with myself, ground in the untethered-ness, and feel alive. To rejuvenate and foster greater connection to myself that makes it a little easier to hold my grip on it when I return. Maybe there’s something in the air in Copenhagen or any of the other countries I’ve been to. And maybe for people that don’t or can’t travel, they have their own Copenhagen in their apartments, backyards, gym, or books. They have some sort of entity or process that helps them listen to their whispering voice, feel the parts of their bodies and themselves that make them feel alive, and they seek themselves just like I do.
It’s now 3:35 a.m. in Copenhagen, and my whispering voice finished speaking. It needed to be heard and I needed to write what it said. And now I’m ready for a little nap before I wake up, pack, and head to Munich.
