Strangeness, Reality, Adult, Emotions, Life.

The past few weeks have been beyond strange to me. Looking back, the past seems to take on this unreal shade, as if it never truly happened. Maybe this is just what happens when lots of changes follow each other, that one has the sensation of being cut loose from everything, of just drifting from one event to another. I'm really not entirely sure what to think about things, beyond doing the best I can do with my rational thoughts and feelings.

While the initial start in Germany wasn't so stellar, I have had a few weeks now to get my bearings at the place where I'm currently staying. In many ways it's been a return to normal life, something quite unusual to me, as all I have known for the past decades has been a constant push into ever stranger and less familiar territory, culminating into the medical horror story of the past decade. Being caught in this flow of 'normal' life it has finally given me time to think about things I didn't generally spend much time thinking about, such as my own looks. Not in the general sense at least.

It's only at this stage of my life that I don't have to defend or question who or what I am, or what looks back at me in the mirror. I now just have to accept the truths which have crystallized over the years to where it is not possible to deny them. Truths including that of me being an adult. An adult woman. A pretty, adult woman. It casts me back in my memories to 2005 when I was struggling with a similar realization, at which point I could not comprehend in any fashion that I was no longer a child. Rationally I was aware of this fact, but emotionally I could not accept it in any form or shape, let alone that of me being a woman.

Now, nearly a decade later and after a harrowing war fought in the Netherlands against the System, I feel that I have aged far beyond my years in an emotional sense. I no longer have trouble accepting that I am an adult. I can accept that I am an adult woman. I do however not feel pretty. Looking at myself in the mirror I just see the exhaustion and scars. The grime of the battlefield covering everything and the gouges left in my skin.

It was good for me to leave the Netherlands. I had to. Now that I have left it I feel as though I'm at least not standing on the battlefield any more. It still lives inside of me, but I can look around and see a world which is still whole and pure instead of filled with death and decay. Part of the nightmare which still lived in my head has faded away already, even if the countless wounds are still bleeding fresh blood. It will still take more time for them to turn into scars.

At this point I still feel like a child in some respects. I feel at home on the battlefield, where I'm fighting for my own life and for those on my side against the faceless, cruel enemy, just defending and attacking in a continuous cycle until I can no longer feel my arms, or my shoulders and I can not fathom where the oxygen powering my muscles is coming from as my lungs are on fire. Yet place me outside this battlefield and I feel as inexperienced and clumsy as a newborn babe. I'm not used to a world where people are not trying to kill or attack me in some fashion, let alone where I can just go out and get the medical help I require without having to spend a decade of my life fighting for it.

In some ways it's more frightening this way. At least in a battle I know the rules. Here I just feel awkward and fragile. Unprotected. Every time I do something wrong I feel horrible, because I know that I should have known better. Even though I'm learning, ever so slowly, it will still take a long time for me to stop expecting the worst to happen at any point. I expect physicians and psychologists to torture me. So-called friends I expect to abandon and ridicule me. Those claiming to care about me I expect to ruin my life.

There's only survival on the battlefield, no life. Learning to live a life is going to be so very tough.

Tomorrow I'll be moving to another place again where I'll probably be staying until I can find a house to rent on the side of the river opposite to Karlsruhe. After talking with some people about it I feel fairly confident that it is the area where I want to be living for the coming time. Hopefully it will all work out from here, as there's still so much to take care of, from getting a German bank account, health insurance, a place of my own, visiting my surgeon and so many more details.

As long as it doesn't lead me back onto the battlefield, it is all fine with me.


Maya