Knowing Is Not Enough

My heart racing, breath shallow.

Behind the counter, coffee drips through glass.

My fingers move over my phone. Quick, one site is opened, then another. My eyes scan its content while my shoulders are up to my ears. My lips pressed together, jaw locked. So tense, anyone could see it immediately. Stressed, anxious.

There is someone next to me.

A dear friend.

But I don’t feel my body, don’t feel the rigidity, the overwhelm that I’m clearly in. Instead all I see are words, are numbers, is advice I found online from people I don’t know. It is information here, a solution there, and my mind grasping them, holding on so tight to those answers. Inspecting for holes, finding them, of course, then grinding on. Gritting my teeth. Not taking a break, no breath, no real one at least.

The soft eyes of my friend are on me. Mouth open for a second, closed again.

A waiter approaching. Normality. Two coffees in his hand. He puts them on our table. Steaming. The aroma catching my attention. So does the waiter, I look up. Not wanting to appear strange in any way. Good girl conditioning switches on, it always does.

A smile appears.

Thank you, I say.

Was my voice breathless?

It must have been. At the same time, I was such a professional nice girl that maybe it was not. Maybe it seemed just a little too squeamish, just a little too eager to please, a little over the top but nothing that would have caught anyone’s attention.

How tightly I held myself together.

Just chill.

Come on, just take it easy, girl.

My eyes follow the waiter as he leaves. With him normality goes.

Four years ago, I took a leap of faith. Left all I knew. Quit the job, the apartment, decided to leave the country I had lived in for 8 years. A one-way ticket to Southeast Asia. I was on my own and I had nothing to hold onto. I am not even a big adventure type, not an adrenaline seeker. Didn’t know for how long I would want to stay there. Didn’t know where I wanted to go exactly. Or why. There were just so many open threads, bundles of questions in my head. A burning desire to… just go.

Identity shattered into a thousand pieces and I could not catch those burning up.

That’s when leaving feels right. When nothing fits anymore.

A layer of fear and uncertainty gathered around me. Of hope, too. Excitement. As if, if I might be lucky, I would be able to understand what was going on. Who I was. Who I needed to be. Where I felt at home.

Did I just go backpacking? Beer, hostels, that Australian beach guy?

You know that’s not what happened.

Such pressure on a trip.

These existential questions, a hunger I could not fully understand.

Naturally, every detail of packing and preparing felt load-bearing. When putting the first bundles of clothes onto my floor, next to my backpack, I looked up some packing inspirations, read some online travel guides. That’s when I realised all recommended bringing two credit cards. Makes total sense. I, however, only had one and time was too short now to apply for a second one.

Unfortunate, but not the end of the world.

So one would think.

It threw me into a deep state of anxiety. Of panic. Of fear I couldn’t, for the love of god, shake off. Nagging. It dragged me down. Or no, that is not the right description. What it did was throw me into the air, where I gasped, where I flailed, arms and legs wide, afraid, nowhere to land, and I could not fly.

Just a credit card.

A second one, a safety card.

All was good, there were plenty of other options to figure things out. But my mind went rogue, it relentlessly showed me vivid stories of me in Asia, my only credit card sucked in by an evil ATM, then me, alone, lost in the dark. Dragged away by mysterious men. Helpless. A victim. Blamed for not having prepared better. It went from zero to minus five-thousand and threw me off that cliff. Into nothingness and pain and all this blame, you should have known better. It is all your fault. Your fault. You have made a mistake and now you will pay for it.

Stupid girl.

It’s clear now that the panic wasn’t about the card.

This trip was not an adventure.

It was a cry for help.

There must be something else.

Anywhere.

Anything.

Meanwhile I am sitting in the café, a genuinely worried friend next to me.

Finally a sip of that coffee.

Oat milk foam. A small, sweet cookie with it.

Did it calm me down? I wish it would have. The anxiety remained high. I wanted to get my shit together for my friend. For anyone, really. I did not want anyone to see how panicked I felt. I knew no one took them seriously. I knew I was exaggerating. I knew there was no logic involved, only senseless drama and stress.

I knew all of that.

Knowing is not enough.

The fear stayed rooted within me, took the form of a mind rolling over itself, scratching its long fingernails across its sensitive organs. Cut deep into me. Pain, heart rate rising. Desperately ignoring what was happening, no one must see. I am not a mess, I will not admit that I am afraid. I chose this, I must endure, must do this without panic, cannot show.

More, more, more. Think more, anxiety says. Don’t let go. Don’t you dare to let go. Don’t you dare to relax. Think now, think your way out.

All of my attention moves to my head. In panic, in blind obsession.

Lifted from the ground, dangling feet.

See me sitting in the café?

A fraud. You can see it in the hunched posture, the ghostly eyes scanning everything. She is gone, that woman at the table. Lost to her darkness. Still believing that perfectionism could fix this.

What is this anyway?

Uncertainty holds its blade to my throat.

For years to come.

But I am not alone, in the café.

My friend checks in on me. Asks what I need. Researches alternatives with me. Then helps me to write a small to-do list, a plan, tangible things I can actually do once I get back home.

He double-checks.

Was he the calm outside of me?

You can see she is shaky, hands cold, fingers trembling a little. Coffee in her right hand.

Fear is greater than the credit card. It just uses it as an excuse to dig into her soft flesh. And holds onto it.

I imagine she is four years older. Someone who knows her body well, inhabits it. I imagine how she puts the phone down. The steaming cup in both of her hands, it warms her. She closes her eyes, guides the coffee to her face, takes the aroma in. A deep breath through her nose. Comfort. She knows this smell.

The thing about closed eyes?

Good girls know how to scan the room and everyone around them. All this input plays into the overthinking mind. Details. Unguarded, they take more and more in. So accustomed to it, it doesn’t occur to them that this is not where their attention belongs. So they try to calm down, not for their own sake, but for everyone else’s. Wait till I get home, then I can fall apart properly, she thinks.

Obsess and stress about it.

The one place she never learned to look: inside.

Another breath.

Now she notices how high her shoulders reach, how stiff her neck is. The jaw clenched. And all those unspoken words her pursed lips hold.

The tension, the anger, the blame.

Slowly, she opens her lips. Just an inch.

With the next out-breath, she allows her shoulders to sink down. The jaw to soften. The lips to let go.

There, there.

Just one more second.

One breath for the belly.

Unknown territory then.

Her home now.

Clarity.

When she opens her eyes, she turns around and finally sees her friend.

That day, both of them finish their coffees, put the empty cups back on the table. The written to-do list in front of them. He asks one last time, is this okay for you? Do you feel a little more settled now?

Her jaw is still clenched, her shoulders still tight. But her mind is a little quieter. The fear has settled back into the body, she can see a little more clearly. Connected to her friend’s support and that list.

She has a plan. She holds onto it.

Then nods.