Instagram has been both a guide and taunt through this time of Corona and Zoom University. In seconds, memories are sent to my screen reminding me of what almost seems like another life. I can’t help but wonder what might have been, in an alternate reality. In this reality, looking back a year prior to where I am today, I truly cannot wrap my head around how much has changed and continues to be torn down and reconstructed. It is quite a strange feeling too, in the sense that I don’t have any desire to rewind time. The good and the bad have served me equally, and the amount of work I have done over the past year is something I’m very proud.
Of course, I do think fondly of certain points in time, especially of last summer in Berlin. How everything was so simple and it felt as though the Sun would never set. It was the quintessential summer: full of parks and lakes and bottles of Sternburgs. However, like everything, summer does not last forever. If it did, we would have no reason to cherish it so heartily, and almost certainly have nothing to look forward to. And so it goes, summer to fall to winter, and then you suddenly find your self closer to the past than you are to the future.
I’ll never pretend to be a philosopher, but I do find peace in these thoughts of everything and nothing at all. Waking up today I was filled with gratitude for what was and what might be. Berlin is a piece of me now, in the friends I love, the words I use, and the peace for myself that I continue to cultivate.
This picture below was taken on the 29th of January in 2020, a year that none of us will ever forget. It was a year of so much pain, but also a year where we got closer to clarity, in ourselves and the world around us. This day stands out to me as my first day in Berlin, an exciting, cold day in a new city that seemed to jump right off of some kind idealized checklist that I didn’t even know I had written. Berlin felt like the home I had been searching for. Running around the city on that first day, there was so much I was yet to learn, but I simply remember the chaotic, exhilarating energy of something that simply felt written in the stars.
Well, one’s first day somewhere truly does set the tone for the rest of the adventure! I’m pinching myself, as it is hard to believe this was a year ago when, sitting here now, it only feels a few pages away. Today, I’m extra grateful for the city that gifted me soulmates, reinvigorated the fire within me, and provided solace in a crumbling world. I’m trying my hardest to channel this same, fresh spirit as we enter the new possibilities of another semester and a new year. To love is to lose, and I’m missing Berlin and her beautiful people (and this tote bag that I left on a bus) everyday.