A Willingness to Be Human
I had mixed feelings this morning, waking up knowing that in a few short hours I would be free to roam, to explore, to actually do the very thing that I came here to do.
As reflected by the designated photo just a couple lines up. The look on my face is raw, unfiltered, and just an external reflection of my internal stewing. I can assure you, I did not select this photo because I thought I looked great, or radiant, or enlivened.
My alarm went off at 7:15am and for the first time in days I felt wide awake and ready to face my day. Whoop told me that last night my sleep was sufficient enough to produce a recovery score above 33%, or for my fellow Whoop wearers, “not in the red”. I’d been stuck in the red all week, no matter what. I toss this one up to no real vitamin D or fresh air coupled with far more screen time than my conscious brain could comprehend. (More on the unofficial experiment I did on myself via Whoop at a later date—this is one I’m very excited to share.)
On the books, data showed that I was ready.
But in my body, this is the very first moment in this entire translocation process that allowed for what I can now identify as nerves to surface and alter my perception of what I was about to do.
Everything else up until this point had felt automatic.
Fill out the paperwork. Send it in. Wait for a response. Book flights that will slowly progress me further and further west from my initial US landing point of Columbus, Ohio.
See the friends. Get on the flights. Savor the moment. Rent the car. Drive from San Diego to LA. Drop rental car off at LAX. Go through security. Just get on the flight.
And in my head, I thought that getting on that flight would be the hardest part, but to be frank that was easy. Get on the very plane that will transport me into the new life that I have accepted and committed to create in this new place I had never been. Starting with a two week stay in a hotel whose very name could not be disclosed until arrival via shuttle.
So I proceeded with the automatic movements once my plane landed. I exhibited my proper paperwork at customs. I got on the shuttle to take me to an undisclosed hotel. I checked into the hotel. I went up to my room. And I stayed there for two weeks.
And today, on November 22, 2020 at 12:01 Singapore Stand Time, the time had come—freedom.
During confinement in Andorra, Evan, Lea, and I watched Casa de Papel, which on Netflix in the US is translated to Money Heist. We were hooked, it was just too good. Four seasons watched in a matter of days. We indulged, allowing our own boredom and uncertainty in our own lives to be metamorphosed into a suspenseful evolution of a bank robbery and interpersonal relationships and master plans. We had the chance to experience a range of emotions far more exciting than anything we were moving through in our day to day, and we were so okay with it.
One of the rules in the show is that the cohort of robbers is to work together, but not to know the true names of one another. Each character adopts names of different cities around the globe. A fan favorite is Nairobi, but some others include Denver, Tokyo, Rio, and Oslo, who naturally holds a soft spot in my heart.
***Spoiler Alert***
At the end of season two (I think…we watched them all in such rapid concession that it is no longer clear to me what happened in which season—not unlike the days of this two week quarantine) one of the hostages has fallen in love with one of the robbers. She has fallen for Denver. And she does this so decisively that she decides that she wants in. She wants to stay with him. And accordingly, in proceeding seasons, she is called Stockholm.
***Spoiler Alert has concluded, you may resume normal reading***
Which brings me to my point.
Can you feel the hesitancy in my eyeballs? I can. Again, I put this here because it is authentic, because this was me on the morning before my unleashing unto Singapore and all its glory. This is real.
I woke up this morning feeling a twinge of Stockholm syndrome. Alright, not like the full-fledged thing, I don’t mean to be dramatic here, but a hair’s worth of what this could be called if someone were to, you know, call it something. This was a running joke amongst people in a Facebook group for Singapore Hotel Quarantiners. At first I couldn’t understand, but as evacuation neared, the feelings became increasingly comprehendible.
I’ve returned back home to myself during this time, as you’ve seen or perhaps felt through content and photos that I’ve shared if you’ve been following along. I haven’t been bull shitting you with those. That’s been ME. A return home to Self. A Teshuvah as it is called so beautifully in Hebrew. It was about damn time.
And when I got out of bed this morning and started my morning movement (or designated joint lubrication time, if you’re feeling silly), the joy felt lackluster. I felt uneasy. I felt out of my body. I felt out of the present moment. I felt resistance. I felt…nervous.
From the outside it’s easy to say, well yeah Gab! You’ve moved to a new place, by yourself, where you know very few people, and you’re about to get metaphorically slimed by newness.
But from the inside, for the past two weeks in the safety, comfort, and predictability of my hotel room, it was easy to feel bold and brave and courageous and present because I knew exactly what to expect. Now comes the test of all of the things that I’ve been writing about and so openly publishing on a freaking blog, for Christ’s sake.
As Susan, my friend, mentor, and constant teacher of life asked me today: “Are you willing to be human?”
Now was the moment to quiet the inner voice that slipped into my being overnight, whispering to me that yes, sure would be nice to have a couple more days of this.
Days of what? Avoiding the very things that I came here to do, AKA live and experience my life?
No chance.
I finished my movement, took a moment to respond to some texts, completed my last Homer selfie and temperature check, and got to my “never let ya down” time with by side BAE Shean T. I got present in my body during the week’s final Insanity Max 30 workout, Friday Fight 2, and got my brain focused in what I was doing. Not on the bits of fear and apprehension that were sprinkling into my consciousness.
It was business as usual, taking a moment to stretch after and attempt to stop sweating, showering, calling my Dad to check in. He seemed more excited for me to get out and start living than I was in this moment. He galvanized (I’m in Singapore so it should be noted that proper spelling of this word here is as follows: galvanised) and encouraged until the cows came home (or until his black and white spotted Boston terriers called more of his attention) and then called it a night, as it was approaching a bewitching 10pm in Columbus. But before signing off, when expressing to him this moment of pause and reserve I was experiencing, he lovingly suggested that I go back and reread my own posts and etchings. Hits me with the good advice.
The last hour of my quarantine was quickly approaching and it was to be spent on a Zoom call with three of my best guy friends from high school. Certainly time well spent. Every so often, one of them, Jared, would blurt out how many minutes I had left. I was grateful for his enthusiasm, because on the inside I was feeling unsettled.
It was five minutes ’til, at which point I left them to compile any last items that were laying around. I took a moment of gratitude for all that had been accomplished in this room, reminding myself that it wasn’t so much about the doing or what I did, but who I got to be in this room. And reminded myself that there was absolutely no reason that I could not continue to be this same person, this same joyous, elated, liberated, vulnerable Gabby, outside of the four walls of safety and comfort of the Capri Hotel room 319.
Both aspects of me are there in this photo. The piece of me that is ready to go and take on the world, and the shadow looming behind that is, perhaps rightfully so, scared shitless and what the hell she has gotten herself into and encouraging her to do some weird thing with her foot–perhaps a safety mechanism. But knows she can do it…obviously.
At 12:01, I took one last selfie in the flattering mirror in the foyer, gathered my luggage that had low key been packed since yesterday. I maneuvered the two heavy backpacks, two suitcases, and yoga mat to the elevator. I descended to floor two, as instructed, and headed towards reception. Autopilot was back for a moment. I handed the concierge my designated paper that represented my completion of quarantine and let her know that I was the temporary resident of room 319.
“Okay, thank you.” She said to me nonchalantly.
“Is that all?” I asked. Wondering if after all this time, there wouldn’t be a more momentous au revoir in store for me or my other comrades who had just undergone the same solitary confinement.
“Yes! That’s all.”
I collect my bags, move to the elevator to the final descent between the captive indoors and the hot, humid, potentially rainy world outside.
When I finally got outside, I took a moment to stare at the sky. My eyes felt so sensitive after not seeing direct sunlight out of my window for nearly two weeks. It is monsoon season here in Singapore meaning clouds run rampant throughout the day. I have to laugh, because I moved out of Norway and practically onto the equator with the preconceived notion that bright, dazzling sun would be in my every day. Stay tuned.
I waited for a cab to come and retrieve me and bring me to what would be my new home for the next three months. It was taking a little longer than expected, but I was not mad in the least. The bellhop invited me to come under the awning with my belongings to circumvent some of the heat and light. I laughed in my head, thinking that there is no where on this planet I could be that would replenish all of the vitamin D that I was wrung dry of these last two weeks indoors. I will be just fine in this heat and sun, however I graciously thanked him for his polite invitation.
I also took this gifted moment of pause to sit in my feelings.
It is okay to be feel fearful, to feel apprehensive, to feel unsure. To be human.
As Zen monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, says, we must take care of our feelings as if we were a mother taking care of a child. This is the only way to move through them, as there is no going around in this game. They must be nurtured and tended to in order to release them into the ether.
Even as I said these things to myself and leaned into this opportunity, I couldn’t help but continue to feel contracted. And to be honest, this feeling has stuck with me throughout the day. Even trying to nurture it, I do not feel any imminent alternation in my body chemistry, let alone shift in perspective.
I feel lost. I feel unprepared.
I feel like outside the safety and predictability of the walls that held me the last two weeks, the profound sense of trust and clarity I had been feeling is hiding under a boulder.
But here is the thing: it is okay.
Because in my two weeks of feeling safe, secure, and in a stretch of predictability, I’ve built up the tools that I need to move through this instant of contraction and back into my natural expanded state. I’ve built in habits that will allow me to gently move through without shame or guilt for what I’m feeling, and in a way that will ensure that I do not get stuck here.
In the two weeks prior to this very moment, I was in a cocoon. A literal cocoon of all things premeditated, all things secure. But caterpillars do not stay in a cocoon forever. It is merely a resting place during which time they can reconfigure, fluctuate in purpose, and re-emerge something evolved and novel altogether.
These two weeks gave me a moment to come home, and it was now time to be reborn as the same Gabby, with the addition of an updated toolbox and a refreshed outlook.
I sit here and write reminding myself that it is natural. Everything is new. It is okay to feel a tick of uncertainty. It is okay to feel human.
And I also remind myself that I, as Gabby, do not hold any less value because I am harboring these feelings in this moment.
Even from half a world away, I am supported. I am loved. I am seen.
And now, I get to utilize the tools and habits I practiced in these last two weeks to give those exact same things to myself.
So here we are, on night one.
I sit in my new apartment, unpacked, ogling at the seemingly endless series of green plants that sit before me on a shelf under the television.
I embrace this moment of contraction, knowing that expansion hasn’t left me, I’m just going through a temporary squeeze. And I’ll move through, as I always do.
I breathe deeply, exhaling extra long to kick those parasympathetics into action. I embrace the moment of quiet, with the exception of sloshing water outside in the streets as cars drive down the five-lane roads beneath my window.
This is my new home, physically. But I am always home within. And that is the most important thing.
Day one is not always easy and it is okay.
Because I am willing to be human.
