Allowing

I see the world passing by in the windows in the left corners of my eyes. Sunlight is falling through the train carriage. It is forming shadows on the opposite wall, they strive forward, fight without a chance against the direction of travel. On the folding table in front of me: the water of a tear. I say that I wouldn't mind crying. I just wouldn't like doing it in the middle of the train ride.

I thought I had learned to be genuine: To accept my insecurities and to show them openly. I was mistaken. Apparently, I show my insecurities only when I deem them meaningful and when I already processed them.

I don't like talking about the fear that my so far unsuccessful apartment search evokes in me. I also don't like talking about how paralyzing it feels to be without a foundation. It seems too trivial to share with somebody. I don't like talking about the unhealthy habits that return each time I am stressed, unsolicited, precisely when I thought I had overcome them. The struggle against them seems never-ending, there is no outcome to announce.

I thought I had learned to be authentic: To experience my emotions and to express them. I was mistaken. Apparently, I only show positive, "useful" emotions, and only when I deem them socially desirable.

When I was younger, I considered my emotionality one of my best traits, I immersed myself even in longing and sadness. Today, I find myself opposing my emotions. In my surroundings at the university, emotions aren't denied, but surely not celebrated either. I don't see my emotionality anymore as a coat of paint that gives color and depth to my life. I see it as a swampy layer in which my feet are stuck, hindering my advancement.

I don't like talking about the two extensions I had to ask for in order to deal not only with the images from Gaza, the escalation in northern Israel, and the tensions at my university but also with my studies. I don't like talking about how I often fell short of my own expectations because my emotions claimed the space and time that otherwise would be reserved for work. Often, I understood my emotions as excuses for not functioning well. And I hated this understanding.

Now I am sitting in the middle of the train ride – and cry. A call, another rejection from a potential roommate lets the staged security and self-imposed rationality collapse. The fragility and sensibility that I had so carefully tried to contain, break through. Society doesn’t want them, I can't bear them myself, and yet they are mine.

Outside, now in clouds, the world is passing by. The water of my tear dried. The whole train ride, he had been sitting next to me, letting me write. Now, as he embraces me, I breathe deeply the scent over his shoulder. He doesn’t give me the advice and answers that I had never asked for. He gives me a space in which reality and its influences and constraints seem left aside. I let it happen: Let him envelop me, let him carry the parts of me that I can’t bear myself.

Allowing dependency seems to be the only way to become myself.