Starting a New Life in Germany
A plane leaves the runway, only to be forced back by fierce crosswinds at its destination. It circles overhead, attempting to land again and again, yet never quite makes it to the ground. If I were to stretch the comparison, that plane would not be so different from where I found myself over the past year.
Moving to another country feels a little like rebuilding the stage of a play from the ground up, replacing every last piece of the set. As I carried a mountain of a life 9,000 kilometers from South Korea to Germany, my everyday life seemed to lose the ground beneath it, suspended somewhere in midair. Two weddings ⎯ one in summer, the other in winter ⎯ would have been enough on their own. Then my mother’s pneumonia took an unexpected turn, followed by the unimaginable reality of her funeral. Somehow, I held together a mind that kept slipping through my hands, and found myself standing in another summer.
Last July, I arrived in Germany and got married. In November, we held another wedding in Korea. From December through February, I lived through the slow loss of my mother. In March, I returned to Germany and began putting the practical pieces of life here into place. More recently, my father’s first month-long visit to Germany came to an end, and I made my way through the final week of June under an unforgiving heatwave. By the time another July arrived, a full year had quietly passed.
More than anything, I wanted to put down roots. Yet I found it difficult to hold my mind still long enough to lose myself in anything. On the days when my spirits sank, one phrase kept appearing in my journal: neither here nor there. I longed to retreat into myself, to search for an answer, and to return with it.
After nearly a year, anxiety and frustration began to burn through me like a torch. Before that longing could splinter, it was finally time to do what my soul and unconscious had been asking of me all along. I lowered my fingers onto the typewriter like aerial roots reaching for the earth. A life at a desk can be every bit as alive as one on a festival dance floor.
Before a plant can put down roots, it first needs soil. For people, roots begin with a sense of stability. That quiet steadiness grows out of physical strength and the repetition of everyday life. The structure of daily living and the framework of one’s work become the ground beneath our feet. From there, I hope my life will continue to take on unexpected forms through chance encounters, unforeseen turns, and all the small accidents in between.
Is there a way to belong to Germany and Korea at the same time, or perhaps to anywhere else as well? Whatever work I end up doing, I want to build a life that offers as much stability and as much freedom to move as possible. I want to become a tree that can carry a piece of the earth it has rooted itself in, wherever it goes.
A new life begins to reveal its fresh body. <Who are you?>, <What kind of person are you?> These are the questions people keep asking me here. In this unfamiliar world, even the parts of myself that had become so natural I never thought to explain them seem to have been reset, down to the smallest corners.
What expression will I wear? What clothes will I choose? What role will I step into? All of it is mine to decide. Here, I can shape my identity however I wish, or refine it into something even more precise. Standing before this overwhelming blank space, I find myself asking one question: What qualities do I want to fill it with?