Ertia.

The only thing you ever grasped from your music theory class 7 years ago is that you like minor chords. There’s something about that sound, leaving you wanting more, a bit off from the whole note it’s leading up to, that gets you. Today you heard a beautiful sound and wondered how it worked. Kind of like you realized how the velociraptors were singing that night at Cross Club. Sometimes things just make sense.

You’re not sure if it’s normal to sleep in 25 different places in 7 months, but you don’t really care. Mostly, you’re not sure how you’ll explain this year to anyone else. You won’t. What did you do? You lived, like everyone else, like everyone. But in 25 places. Twenty five spaces with hundreds of people, some whose names you’ll never remember but are etched into your memory regardless. Mostly you remember the lights and the feelings you had that just don’t muster up any words. So it’s just for you. You’re in a foreign country that is quickly becoming not-so-foreign, learning a language you only heard spoken aloud for the first time in January. It’s funny how life works, isn’t it?

You get down sometimes, but then you take the hour walk home from Rosenthaler Platz to Weberwiese because you don’t want to wait 8 minutes for the U-Bahn and regain the feeling that you're in control of your life. There's one thing you can always figure out and that is how to get home. Home being the surface that you'll be sleeping on that night. The world is your oyster. You don’t even know what that means and you don’t even fucking eat oysters, but it will be your oyster anyway, goddamnit. Life is hard. Growing up is hard, but you can’t help but think there’s something beautiful about it. It makes you sad when people talk about the “best years of their lives”. They say, “Those were,” past tense. You hope every year is the best year of your life, and if it isn’t then you’ll damn well make it be. After growing up around no one who ever really seemed happy, you’re determined. You don’t want to be one of all the Adults, almost every adult you met before you were 19, who got trapped in themselves. By themselves. By what everyone told them they were supposed to do. Inertia. The word inertia has been stuck in your head ever since you asked your friend two years ago, heartbroken, how she thinks people can ever stay in relationships forever, how is this possible? Forever is a long time and you weren't feeling very hopeful.

“Inertia.”

Well.

You’re definitely lacking that. If “ertia” was a word, it would describe you perfectly. We always asked each other in Prague, "This isn't our country, why are we here...what makes us want to just up and leave everything we know to go live in another country?" It was a running joke, something you asked every new expat you came across, "So...what are YOU running from?"

So what are we running from? That's a good question.

You think sometimes you’re either completely broken, or the only one whose got it right. Both, depending on the day. Lately you’ve been trying to figure out what your biggest fear is because you’ve wanted to ask other people the same question. Being an English teacher has sort of primed you to go right for the pressing personal matters. They lead to extended discussion, after all, and your TEFL school told you you talk too much. Skip the formalities and get to the good stuff. Who are you? Tell me.

It took a few weeks of thought, but it’s simple. You’re afraid that all the reasons you’ve built up for how things are, your understanding of the universe, is wrong. Subjectivity is no objectivity, but it’s all you’ve got. You’re starting to think that happiness is just a decision. You decide to be happy. Sometimes, the time is wrong, but in the end it’s just a new way of looking at the same things. You don’t believe in religion, but everything in your life has fixed itself to make sense eventually. It’s only those times when you were a stubborn sonofa that you missed it. Everything happens for a reason, maybe. Maybe you just give it a reason because that’s the only way you can live with it all, but it’s still eerie how things work sometimes.