Reflections on my 25th year

In the weeks leading up to my 25th birthday, I started getting very depressed about the state of the world. My view of the human race was getting increasingly pessimistic. I began to seriously question whether or not I wanted to have my own kids- something I used to take for granted. What we do to our earth and to each other is heart-wrenching, and to belong to a species that causes harm on such unfathomable scales at times brings me great shame.

I was born into a world (we all were) where the destruction, devastation, violence and the pain we see around us were centuries in the making, and yet throughout my life, adults would say, “Your generation has a lot of work to do, cleaning up our mess…” These comments bothered me, and it wasn’t just the slightly detached way they’d say it - as if they were exulting in the fact that they were off the hook, as if in their 55th year of life, they were no longer able to clean up the mess they kept on making. But it wasn’t just that.

Years later, I understood why those words bothered me so much, and it’s because no amount of work, sacrifice, blood, sweat, or tears from my generation or those who will follow can undo what they’ve done, or what the people before them did. The broken pieces of our world can’t become unbroken, and this is a pill I’m still trying to swallow, but accepting this reality can’t mean we stop trying. Our task is to accept this fact without letting its weight crush us into inaction and apathy.

On top of that, I began to slip into the western woman’s greatest fear: getting older. I could feel time slipping away and I wanted it to stop, but it won’t. Time has no regard for us. The only words that offered me any solace were from my sister:

Don’t run from these feelings.

Sit with them.

And what a relief it was to stop running. I eventually began to see these feelings as keys to doors that opened up deeper versions of myself, and through those doors, a deeper understanding of other people.

So amidst global wars, mass deportations and right-wing governments on the rise, I didn't feel like celebrating, but the pressure and expectation to enjoy myself made things worse; but one thing became clear: when we let go of the idea that we’re supposed to feel good all the time and accept how we do feel - without judging it or trying to contorting it into something else - a weight is lifted. Meeting myself where I was at emotionally lifted a huge burden, and allowed me to find the quiet joy that was there.

Surviving Bureaucracy

Endeavoring to become a legal resident of Portugal has been something like what I imagine a blind person might feel like in Costco. From the moment you enter the store, or in my case, country, all previous navigational tricks and methods of gathering information virtually disappear. There’s very little written in your language, you don’t know where you’re going or where you’ve been, and you don’t know who to ask for help.

I entered the country assured by friends and the internet (<3) that the immigration process would be easy. I bought a plane ticket, packed my suitcases, said my goodbyes, and left without much knowledge of what lay ahead. The plan was to figure it all out as I went. I later realized this comes from a deeply internalized sense of American exceptionalism and privilege. As free and excited as I felt, I do not recommend this type of departure :’) unless you want your life to feel like a movie for 2 weeks and then banal stress dream for the next eight.

My first 2 weeks were indeed a movie. I lived in hostels, met fellow travelers, ate delicious and new food, and explored more of the city I had fallen in love with the summer before. No one knew me and I knew no one. I could wander around and meet someone, spend eight hours with them, and then part ways without exchanging phone numbers.

And then I got a drink with an American; a young woman and mutual friend (twice removed) who had moved here recently for graduate school. She started talking about her partner’s Visa troubles, and suddenly I realized I wasn’t wearing pants (figuratively speaking).

“You didn’t go to the embassy?”, she asked me. Those words sounded so heavy, so full of responsibilities and waiting rooms. As I sipped a glass of some nasty liquor I ordered to be ~spontaneous~, reality came crashing down. It was time to pay the price for my main character energy.

I began doing research online for how to get as a short-to-long-term Visa. Oddly, I couldn’t find a single working website for Portuguese immigration. I tried multiple phone numbers - no answer. I felt like a freshman, helpless and confused, except with a more developed pre-frontal cortex, i.e. stress response. After a few more days of marinating in confusion, I found out that the Portuguese immigration branch had closed down with no certain date of reopening! Yes! This might sound unbelievable to a foreigner, but having been here for 5 months now, it is totally on brand.

Another major adjustment: the internet.

Somehow, the internet felt someone’s abandoned backyard.

Unlike in the States or other cities in Europe, the internet here isn’t filled with well-built websites, reviews, addresses, decent interfaces, store hours, or contact information. It looks like what I imagine it did in the early 2000’s: you type in a question, or a topic, and often the first link to appear is a Reddit page. Maybe a Facebook thread. Many sponsored ads. Sometimes a website. Lots of people asking questions that never got answered. Things written on websites are often unreliable, outdated, or false. Entire agencies don’t have websites. Grocery stores have instagrams, websites have incorrect or missing information, and on top of that, no one picks up the phone. For a while, I felt like I couldn’t see straight, especially when it came to the immigration process.

Example: In order to apply for a work visa in Portugal, you need a few things, like a Portuguese bank account. But in order to open a bank account, you need a work contract. But 95% of the time, you can’t get a job (and certainly not a contract) without a visa. But you can’t get a work visa without a bank account… And yeah no one answers the f**king phone!

I got extremely lucky. By the grace of god and the skin of my teeth, I managed to get a job in a bookstore - don’t ask me how. It was truly a godsend moment. The other day while I was shipping out second hand books, my boss, a 26 year old independent business owner, said the following:

“In the U.S., you have a citizenship test. In Portugal, you just have to survive the bureaucracy. If you can do that, you’re Portuguese.”

There was more truth in that statement than I think he realized. Passing through Portuguese bureaucracy is a form of cultural conversion. The disjointed, lackadaisical nature of the federally-run systems and programs is akin to an “initiation”. Fundamentally, you understand a critical layer of Portuguese life by passing through these processes. And it doesn’t just apply to immigration. From my experience, it’s the same for many businesses, private banks, the insurance industry, the post office, and renting an apartment. But it doesn’t matter as much as it does when the will-they-or-won’t-they-answer-the-phone-this-time outcome can be the difference between you becoming a legal resident or quietly sliding into illegal alien territory. There is a second layer of truth to this joke about “becoming Portuguese”, and one I find more interesting.

Facing the frustrations of the immigration process has required somewhat of a cognitive rewiring.

At many points in the immigration process, I have wanted to bang my head into a wall. There have been moments that I’ve been so utterly at a loss, directionless, and exhausted. Having this experience multiple times over in multiple different realms is a test. The amount of time/money/energy spent arriving at closed doors, showing up for a long-awaited appointment without a necessary document because no one told me in advance that I’d need it, the unanswered phone calls and emails, the language barrier… it’s a lot!

In these moments, a new type of stress would arise, rooted in the fact that I would become illegal in the next (90 - X) days if I didn’t manage to complete these XYZ tasks. And how am I supposed to build a life here on top of this fundamental uncertainty? These were the questions, more real and more uncertain than any I had dealt with prior; and I had never been so far from everyone I knew and the comforts that being with loved ones can provide. With no clear next step other than go back and try again, it was in these moments that I had to recalibrate my stress response.

Sink, or swim. Relax. Adapt. Accept. And try again tomorrow. I had to learn to deal with my frustration and fears differently. When the week is over, you’ve done all you can do, and you’re standing in front of closed doors yet again with no tangible progress made, there’s nothing left to do but put your phone down, sit down in a cafe, drink your delicious 80 cent coffee and appreciate the glowing sunlight hitting the two century old church across the street in the quiet bumbling corner of city. Maybe contemplate the fallen empire. Your heart (and sanity) are sustained this way.

And eventually, with repetition, you adopt a more Portuguese mindset. A more relaxed resting state, one less fixated on time, less easily irritated. Soon, the person stopping the whole checkout line in the grocery store to have a conversation with the store owner becomes a non-event. You no longer order an Uber to the restaurant for fear of being late. (Odds are you’re the first to arrive anyway.)

Here is a photo of “dinner” on one of those long afternoons I spent trying to turn myself into a legal resident. If you can’t tell they’re SARDINES (I felt very Portuguese in this moment).

Persevering through this malfunctioning bureaucracy (I’m sorry but it’s true) has been a test in keeping a level head while still managing to create a life from the bottom up. When the solution is the problem, and the problem is the solution, you keep trying, find someone else to ask for help, keep learning the language, staying organized, finding ways to enjoy yourself in the in between, and hoping that eventually, you will get swallowed up into the circle.

I stood at the bus stop after failing to get in the bank for the third time that week, and finally saw my bus approaching. It was coming, coming, coming, aaaaand going, going, going. I returned to work from my lunch break completely unsuccessful in completing the task at hand.

“I missed my bus twice”, I told my co-worker.

“Impressive, it’s a pretty big object to miss.”

I was grateful for a laugh.

Sunset in Sintra

Once or twice before this has happened in my life: I’m witnessing something so abundantly beautiful, so completely breathtaking, that the only thing limiting my experience of it is my ability to take it in. 

This past weekend, I visited the medieval town of Sintra and spent time at the famous Pena Palace. In 1854, German Prince Ferdinand was to marry Queen Maria II of Portugal, so he constructed this palace as a tribute to his new subjects, but perhaps more likely, to quench his imaginative thirst. It’s an architectural hodge-podge of all the great eras of Portuguese history, and it is so quintessentially fantastical you’d think it was designed by an AI. The architecture alone elucidates my imagination of Prince Ferdinand as the kind of guy that would disappear in the forest for days and come back covered in dirt and exclaim, “I HAD AN EPIPHANY!” He must have been exhausting— very much a modern-day philosophy major at a liberal arts college (I hope that reference is relatable).

By the time we arrived at the palace gates, the mid-afternoon light was upon us. I meandered through the nautical themed bedrooms, gorgeous dining rooms, and the courtyard enclosed in hand painted blue and white tiles. As I was ascending the winding stairwell, I was beckoned by a round window with a view. I let people pass — they were more interested in the castle’s interior— and when I was alone, I crawled into the window nook.

Imagine you’re in an airplane that is taking off through the clouds during the most beautiful sunset you’ve ever seen. Now imagine instead of being in a metallic aircraft filled with strangers pummeling through the sky, you’re sitting against a huge circular window, alone, in a nook carved into the wall of a castle. You’re high up on a mountain, before you is nothing but light blue sky and clouds floating below the castle walls, and the sun starting to set. You can imagine, it all begins to feel a little unreal. From the corner of my eye, I saw a terrace where people were basking in the late afternoon light. Just then, I heard people coming up the stairs, so I hopped out of the nook, went straight to the top floor, and opened the door. 

Earth’s closest star hung just above the clouds, which were floating below us in a neat blanket. The only indication of earth’s surface were the tops of the trees poking through the clouds. The fog from the surrounding forested valley was lapping up against the palace walls, and in the distance, a medieval moorish castle appeared to be floating. 

As sun started to set, it stretched its arms for one final yawn, and we were graced with the most heavenly light the sun can conjure. Writing about it now, sunsets like this call to mind the phenomenon that occurs to a sick person just before dying. In their final days, they get a burst of energy so vibrant people think, ‘Wow, maybe this is a turning point.’ Or the phenomenon of the snake plant that blooms one single flower just before dying. Nature really has a way of saving the best for last.

In a matter of minutes, the terrace became the closest looking place to heaven I have ever seen (or likely ever will see). The golden honey rays, thickened by the fog, bounced off the red and yellow castle walls, suffusing through the mist and lifting the rosy hues in everyones’ cheeks. You could practically feel peoples’ excitement buzzing on your skin. Even the security guard was taking pictures — he’d said he’d never seen a sunset like it. I sat there on the ledge and took it all in. I wanted to soak this moment up and turn it into a memory so vivid that I could close my eyes, years from now, and be transported back to this very ledge. As the sun dropped into the clouds, the sky filled with an orange glow.

The moment was precious… but I hit a ceiling. I couldn’t help thinking, is this it? Why wasn’t I feeling more? Why wasn’t I elated? Why wasn’t my inner world matching the beauty in front of me? This was, after all, the most beautiful sunset I had ever laid eyes on. I felt like I wasn’t doing the moment justice, like I wasn’t perceiving the beauty before me at its true scale. Once or twice before this has happened in my life: I’m witnessing something so beautiful, so abundantly and completely breathtaking, that the only thing limiting the experience is my own ability to take it in.

Then I thought about drugs, and how people take them in moments like this to heighten their senses and emotions. I didn’t like thinking people needed drugs to experience their life more deeply. It didn’t make sense. Then I remembered I had my headphones with me. (Music is a natural drug, no?) I wanted to see if it would change my experience, so I played a song near the top of my playlist, When We’re Older by James Blake, and it changed everything.

The first notes of the piano rushed into my ears like water through a dam and it felt like someone sprayed me with a clairvoyant mist. The landscape started to look not just heavenly, but like actually, heaven. I could feel the sacredness of the beauty in front of me. My chest cracked open and started filling with emotions. Tears started curling in my eyes, and I felt unbearably grateful to be here, to be witnessing this beauty, greater than any I’d seen before, with my father.

Then, something changed, again. I began to see in my mind images and videos I had seen of the women, men, and children dying in Gaza. One video in particular kept coming to mind, of a young boy no older than 4, on a makeshift exam table covered in debris, starring at his trembling hands. The fear in his eyes was deeper than his ability to grasp what had happened, and you could see that this trauma would likely lodge itself in his body for a very long time. The tears that were first conjured from gratitude turned sorrowful, thick and hot as lava, and I began to cry.

The sun was really setting now, and it was only getting more beautiful. But the more beautiful it got, the deeper my despair felt, and the harder I cried. The two feelings had never been so closely entwined, gratitude and despair; beauty and pain. Somehow, the beauty before me cleared the way for em/sympathy for the pain and suffering of people in the world whose realities were concurrently so vastly different from mine. With more appreciation came more despair for the Gazans who are buried under the rubble, dead or alive, who are carrying their brothers or sisters or sons or daughters to the only hospital, knowing very well that little (no) help is on the way, for the people who are fearing that every minute is the last one before they meet a cruel end.

I lied there on the ledge until the sun disappeared, and long after that. I watched people come up the steps and saw the way the sunset would fill their eyes and change their whole being. Everything in them relaxed and opened, their life sources became engaged and nourished. They’d stare with an affect of religious-like wonderment, take photos, even FaceTime loved ones, with feelings of love and awe so full they could spill over. Moms kissed their babies, husbands kissed their wives. The disparate levels of beauty and pain that exist in the world in a single moment is mind shattering. Half a million innocent people are being wiped off the earth in an act of colonialist genocide in the very same moment that I was taking in the most beautiful sunset I had ever seen. What the fuck.

***

Arriving at that ledge, I had a specific idea of what I wanted to feel and what I thought I should be feeling. How could I have known that a feeling of such profound gratitude would strike a seemingly opposite feeling of profound sadness? Emotions can come from places in us that we are strangers to, places that we look away from — in my experience, the more I shy away from an emotion, the stronger it gets — but life is never really like the movies, even when it looks like one. The experience was a new one for me emotionally speaking. I know more clearly than before that moments of elation can have shadows of despair or melancholia, like watching a child grow up, and sometimes there is sadness in beauty and beauty in sadness.

Arrival in Lisbon

I left New York 2 weeks ago. Here are some reflections.

Saturday, 22.00 hrs

I get off the bus with three girls I met last week: Alina from Milan, Nora from Madrid, and Shana from Buenos Aires. One of them heard about an experimental “music show” from a guy she went on a first (and last) date with.

We arrive at the venue, and it’s the kind of place most people would reach and definitively conclude they had the wrong address, if only because one of the front doors was missing. We ascend the winding stairs, and reach an unmarked door. Out of it spills the lulling sounds of deep-toned music and relaxed chatter. What gives us pause is not the smell of wet dog, or the visceral, lingering feeling that you’re in a bathroom at a frat house, but something a bit more surprising:

“There’s a cover.”

Two glasses of red wine and an entrancing electronic DJ set later, I am chatting under red lights with a 6-foot-something 29 y/o architect/model from Chile.

"So why did you come here?”

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There is something irreplaceable about patina and the visible age of worn-in, beloved cities. I was in an airbnb in the old part of the town last week, and every morning when I’d step outside, I was greeted by the worn, warm face of history; on the weathered tiles on the building façades, in between the cobblestone smoothed over by centuries of puttering soles, in the faces of the people walking by (with wrinkles so deep they’d make my mother tremble). In these streets, kneaded from a logic I cannot deduce, I feel the imprint of previous generations, people who lived their whole lives right here. It feels like an embrace from the past. 

Trailing this feeling every morning is an acute awareness of the contrast to the city from which I came — a city that does, in fact sleep, but is woken up from A) a frantic stress dream at 5:40 am by a 20-second honk from a cab driver or B) a light shove from the subway conductor telling you to get up; to the city that is in a constant state of tearing itself down and rebuilding itself back up; to a city with a revolving door of residents, who come in bright-eyed and full of dreams, only to get spit out 3 years later like sour milk, or hardened like rocks in a riverbed, swearing that this is the only place they can be happy (red flag).

To me, this is the greatest gift of an old city: it restores our connection to the past, locates us in time, and puts into perspective our present and future. Being here in a city settled in 1128(!) is giving me a tangible sense of relationality to the broader human story that I think we, in our comparably young & crowded American cities, explicitly lack. In a city that can nearly drown you in skyscrapers (New York City), the pressure and weight on the individual is enormous, unspoken, and an individually-internalized experience. To some, the city’s grandeur makes them feel alive and important, but my question remains: When you have to fight the city itself in order to feel seen, heard, or even see the sunset, how can you put your life in perspective? or evaluate what is meaningful to you? Which takes me back to the red wine, red lights, and abandoned social-club-turned-alternative-performance-space where I relayed this sentiment to the Chilean architect/model (whose name is escaping me but is probably Pedro)… *

“Yes. Talking to Americans sometimes… well I don’t mean to generalize, but it’s like they can't think outside themselves. It’s what makes them so different.”  

I will add though, that I think every place has its blind spots. I’ve noticed here, for example, a dearth in conversation about the Israel-Hamas war (save for ‘Free Palestine’ graffiti markings written in English). This silence has been both relieving, and eerily deafening. Perhaps Portugal is more seeped in the past than it is in the present, and that may have unexpected consequences for its future. 

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To end, here is a snippet from one of my favorite moments of the last two weeks. It’s an audio recording from a very traditional & intimate music bar I went to. The night ended after I passed my date a vape he didn’t know was weed. He had a coughing fit (listen for it), I knocked over both our glasses of wine, and the performers stopped playing altogether. I will carry that shame to my grave … Enjoy xD

*Confirmed, his name is Pedro. He is now a friend