Natasha Regehr
Have you ever received a message like this?
It’s a little surreal. It feels quite final. I’ve made the leap.
I’ve made leaps before. Big leaps. Resigning, house-selling, relocating leaps. Blind leaps, for the most part. Great, optimistic, terrifying leaps into a new unknown. Leaps I’ve later questioned. And here I go again.
As much as I try to think of new things to be thankful for every single day, I can’t help but notice a few themes (read: blatant reiterations) creeping into this year’s Gratitude List. Can you spot them?
Bon courage!
Greeks can be gruff. This is my studied opinion after spending a week in the myth-infused homeland of the gods, with its gruesome stories of bickering deities vying for power and favour.
My Airbnb hostess in Athens was the first to freak out at me. “Why are you late? You should have called! I have a baby! I’ve been waiting for you in this apartment for eight hours now!” For the record, I was not eight hours late, my hostess lived a mere 15 minutes away from the apartment, and I communicated with her the instant my plane landed, so now that I think about it, I’m kind of sorrynotsorry…
Then came the old couple on the ferry. The ones who freaked out when I took one of six empty seats around a table, because they had, in absentia, appropriated all six seats for themselves – only to abandon them after I meekly relocated. I sat at the next table and gave them the evil eye for the rest of the trip. Yeah, mister. You’d better get out your worry beads. Continue reading
I love water. I love being in water. I love being in deep water. I love being upside down in deep water. I love gliding through it, feeling its silky caress against my skin. I love the aquamarine blueness of it, the way the light dances through it, the way I drift and float and submerge and emerge with perfect ease and grace. I love the serenity of this glowing world to which I can escape and suspend time — until my lungs oblige me to surface for a little bit of oxygen.
You can imagine, then, the appeal of staying in this underwater world indefinitely, unconcerned about the trivialities of inhaling and exhaling — just drifting from one delight to the next in a slow ballet of submarine bliss.
Scuba diving, I thought, is exactly what my life has been missing. I must go scuba diving. I will be a natural at manoeuvring through this liquid paradise. I will feel utterly at ease in my favoured element.
Not so. Continue reading
I told a fib today. It was easy, because it was in French.
You see, I’ve been seeking a new artistic outlet that will allow me to get out into the community and interact with other people. By “new artistic outlet,” I mean something that fosters self-expression but that will take me away from my 9-5 life of intoning “do-re-mi-fa-sol” on repeat five days a week. By “community,” I mean “outside of my all-consuming place of work.” And by “other people,” I mean “nice strangers who speak French.” Because this is a linguistic undertaking as much as anything else. Continue reading
Expat life is full of comings and goings, and right now I am feeling the goings much more than the comings. I am suffering the loss of some of my favourite people, and I find myself tempted to retreat to my magnificent new bedroom to while away the hours in comfortable solitude instead of mustering the energy to go out and intentionally cultivate new friendships.
Does anyone else out there understand how uncomfortable it is to watch others socialize freely and effortlessly, but to remain on the outside of their banter? Does anyone find the thought of trying to weasel your way into others’ already-established friendships borderline-terrifying? Does anyone find the thought of spending long, unstructured stretches of time with large groups of people absolutely excruciating?
If so, perhaps you can help me to remain accountable to my new Anti-Isolation, Starting-Over, I-Can-Do-This Social Policy – drawn up just this morning, with a mixture of dread and optimism: Continue reading
I would be remiss if I did not share the official report:
That last post was a little too light-hearted for its content — or rather, for the trajectory of its content. Because what happened next was not at all funny. Continue reading
If you made it to the end of my last post, you may have noticed that I alluded to “another story.” This is it.
I am trapped in a prison compound in the depths of China. Today I plot my escape. Continue reading
I went to China last week, after 43 years of waiting. Here are some impressions: Continue reading
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