Blossom

It's more than a little strange to go through my last posts, posted almost half a year ago - so much has changed, it's mind-blowing. As I'm typing this, I'm lying on a mattress on the floor of my first ever apartment, a relatively small three-bedroom-ap on the fifth storey of an apartment building. This is a shared apartment, but a start is a start, no matter how small... It may be somewhat ascetic and minimalistic, but it's, nonetheless, a place I can call my own. However, much has happened in between those days in March and getting this room - graduation, moving out of home for a job, getting many new friends, getting accepted into university, buying a car... There's plenty to talk about.

After finishing my last high school exams, relief wouldn't even begin to describe what I felt - it was a massive gush of relief, freedom, and pure satisfaction from the knowledge that I had seen it through, I did it. I survived through high school, though it wasn't without a fair share of tears, stress, and sweat. However, all of those bad memories were wiped away as I closed the door of the exam hall behind me and walked out to the crisp spring air as a free man. In that moment, all of the emotional baggage, the stress and the massive expectations fell off from my shoulders. I could finally be a living being... Yeah, you could say I was somewhat happy with finally getting the challenge over with, haha. Though claiming that my life became completely stress-free and perfect from that moment on would be an outrageous lie - it's not that simple, even though it was a big threshold I finally got over. However, the stress lingered in my body for quite a while, and I can't say I'm completely de-stressed even to this point, either. These processes take a long time to work through.

In any case, after finishing my exams, I wasn't bound by any strict responsibilities. Being the way I am, I wasn't capable of just lying in my bed, having nothing to work on. I was seeking for another "project", something to move on to, albeit this time something way less stressful and time-consuming than our devilish high school-system. (There's much I'd like to say about the new curriculum and the development of the educational methods in my country, but that's a topic for another day.) Nah, there was no way I could've just stayed home and slept in each morning - no, I started looking for a job. I wrote a quick post on an online forum, wondering if anybody would know where I could start looking for a job related to agriculture, especially as an uneducated, inexperienced young woman. You see, during last winter and spring, I underwent such a massive shift in perspective and re-discovered my huge interest in the agricultural and agri-economical field. As a kid, my biggest dream was to own farm animals and somehow make a living through a farm, perhaps somehow related to horses, perhaps as an actual farmer... That much I wasn't sure of. In any case, that's how it got to me, this great idea of becoming something of an old-fashioned farmhand: moving to a farm for the next summer, working and helping with farmwork, and learning all kinds of things, like an apprentice! 

I was only half-heartedly toying with the idea of getting any serious inquiries, but to my massive (and pleasant) surprise, one person contacted me just from that forum post alone.

This turned out to be one of the Great Dares in my life; these are somewhat scary or unconventional things I've gathered up the courage to do, and which have become big turning points in my life, or have otherwise just given me incredible memories. This one could very well be one of, if not the biggest Great Dare of my life... However, it's hard to compare them side-by-side; looking back, I see my life more as a big chain of events in which everything becomes a driving factor and a catalyst for the next acts to occur.

In any case, I came to contact with a farm-owner, met with her and the other people living there, shook their hands and became an employee. It was only a few weeks after visiting them for the first time that I packed up my things and moved there. Mind you, this was a small (namely, 600-citizens-small) village from an area of my country that I didn't really have prior experience with, AND, consisted mostly of people who didn't share my mother tongue. It was kind of a crazy, wild idea to all of the sudden move to this tiny place in the middle of literally nowhere, with no way of getting anywhere, as there was absolutely zero public transportation in the area, especially since all of these people were virtually complete strangers to me - and there was the language thing, too. For some reason, it didn't feel that nerve-wracking to me, though: crazy, yes, perhaps a bit risky too, but scary? Not really. The people had seemed nothing but welcoming, so I wasn't worried.

So there I was, living alone in a cottage surrounded by the woods. For the next one and a half months I lived alone, with only two families living nearby. The estate was massive, over one thousand hectares with over 50 buildings in their ownership as well. Meat cattle, sheep, chickens, dogs, cats. Tractors, loaders, saws and hammers all became very familiar to me. I could go on for ages about this job, but in order to save both of our times: everybody was unbelievably kind and open to me, I got to know them, their families and relatives better than even my own, and I loved my job more than any other job I've ever had, maybe even more than any of those I'll have in the future... For the most part, I felt nothing but love towards my work - I learned how to drive and use all kinds of machines, how to reverse with big carts, many things about the feeding and daily care of farm animals, I bonded with their small child that I looked after on almost a daily basis, and got friends for life. It was physically demanding and hard, sweaty work, and the days weren't 9-5, either. But I found so much value and satisfaction from working with both animals and machinery, so usually it didn't feel like a massive task.

Sometimes, we had lunch together, I baked when they had parties or get-togethers, and got invited to hang out with them and their guests. They took me under their wings, these wealthy, unknown people who could've just seen me as some faceless employee; no, we spent our free time together, ate and drank, had fun conversations and laughed to our hearts content. It felt more as though I was family, not just another worker on their pay roll. And the estate itself... Unreal. The sunsets were heartbreakingly beautiful, the way the stars shone (there were no street lamps or cars there, obviously), all the wildlife, such as deer or raccoon dogs that snuck close... The swans, owls... And the misty mornings, cold ocean-breeze, god, the ocean. I fell in love with the ocean, swam in the ice-cold waters in April, smiled. Heated up the sauna and basked in the glory of existence. Woke up early during Sundays and headed to the barn to pet cows. Made friends with adult men who taught me about tractors and had political conversations with me during our (black) coffee breaks. 

The horses arrived during early June, and so did all the other girls. Riding camps began. It was a culture shock; all of the sudden, the farm was filled with life, I had to share my little living space with others, and these girls all knew each other from before. Even though I had lived there during spring, in this group I was still the newcomer. At first I did feel nervous about potentially not fitting in, but it was a dumb fear: everyone was, yet again, so welcoming, and we became very tight as we shared our lives 24/7, for real. Especially two girls became very close to me, we formed a little friend group and had a summer filled with adventure. The camps were demanding as the schedules were fully booked, the weeks action-packed. Sometimes, I worked from 7.30 am to 2 am, since we had "haunted camps" that contained night events. We were all tired, but the others (and of course the lovely horses) made it all worthwhile. I did this and that, oftentimes helping out at the stables, sometimes doing gardening, babysitting or maybe some farmwork. The days were jammed and I felt exhausted every night, crashing into my bed and falling asleep in a matter of minutes. But god, those adventures, those good moments.. All the laughs we shared, all the stupid little things we did. I miss that, I really do. We watched movies, danced around the stables as we were cleaning the boxes, pushed each other on cartwheels, went to adventures on a little rowing boat that we named "Salzberg", tied a horse cart to a bike... We lived and laughed and ate good food, we were all crazy and young and allowed to be dumb and happy. Dumb-happy. I got to ride the finest horses I've ever ridden, one eventing gelding who's supposed to become a GP-horse, for instance. And again, I made friends for life. That was the best part.

When I finally had to leave a couple of weeks ago, on the 26th of August, I cried like a little baby. Damn I cried as I was kissing goodbye to the dogs, I even cried while cleaning up the chicken coop one last time. I had gotten attached to these people, animals, to the location. To all the cousins, uncles, siblings, grandparents, nieces and nephews I had gotten to meet and spend time with. To this lovely, lovely family of lovely people who gave me more than I could've ever asked for, taught me all I now know of farm-related things, who gave me much inspiration for my future successes, advice for studying and entrepreneurship, connections, friendship, and most of all, a chance. I'm eternally grateful to them for that.

(There's a part in me that got a strong, distinct feeling that I'll never return, at least not for a longer period of time, which definitely paid a role in my sadness as I drove off. It was bittersweet - a huge drive to contribute to my own life, a desire to build something of my own and not just enjoy the fruits of someone else's work, but also a feeling of loss and sadness for having to move onto a new chapter. I'll treasure these days for sure.)

During the summer many other things happened, as well: I got my driving license, which was a big -and necessary - thing. Like mentioned before, there was no way to get home from my workplace without a car, so a license was absolutely vital for moving from place A to place B. I also realized that I actually loved (and still love) driving, and had a blast with not just cars, but also tractors and loaders. However, it was a bit of a workload to get that license, since it wasn't simple to combine my job in a whole other area of the country with the driving lessons back at home. It was a long process, but I actually managed to pass the driving exam at first try, which I'm stupid proud of. After getting my license, I almost immediately bought the old car of my colleague - a shitty '99 Mazda that will probably fall to pieces sooner than later, but for now, it has served me diligently. It's for practice purposes, so it doesn't need to be fancy-pancy. I love the feeling of freedom from being able to drive anywhere, anytime, without reliance on others. The main reason for getting a car was definitely for the sake of practice and honing my traffic- and car-handling skills, and now I've driven easily over 2000 km in one month, so I think it's fair to say that it paid off. I'll keep the car for now, but we'll see if I'll end up selling it at some point, as it's not that useful to me in this life situation.

After all, I got accepted into university. It was a half-accident, as I didn't even show up at the exam - I didn't want to go to uni, I wanted to work at the farm for the following year, save up money and get some headrest before re-applying, this time for real. But things don't always go as planned, so the uni wanted to take me anyway for my papers alone.

So here we are, in this moment, back to reality again. On this mattress on the floor of my first ever apartment, a relatively small three-bedroom-ap on the fifth storey of an apartment building. I got accepted into uni and had to say goodbye to my dream-like job for the sake of progressing in my own life - it would've felt more than a little risky to turn down the spot in my desired university studies only to discover that for whatever reason, I wouldn't have been accepted the next year. I don't think that would've been a very likely scenario as I didn't even try the exam this year, but it was a risk either way, so I decided to pursue the dream and took the spot. University began three days ago, and I jumped on the train headed to a new life. That morning my mom hugged me and I finally turned my back to my childhood town. And here I am, in the big world. Alone, haven't quite found my place yet, but excited anyway. Life is... A whirlpool of possibilities, it's this ever-so fertile soil that gives us such good grounds to grow and blossom and reach for the stars. Whatever those may be, constellations look different to each person. In my last post, I talked a lot about cotyledons - this cotyledon is still just at the beginning stages of life, but growing stronger, spreading its roots; it will continue to grow and strengthen until one day, it finally wilts and becomes a chance for someone new to take its place.

My life is still not perfect - currently I'm a bit lost here in this new city, I don't really know anyone yet and feel lonely. I can't say that all my nights are perfect, either, and I might have some sleeping problems every now and then for the rest of my life because of that one bad period in my life, but that's okay, too: I've learned to respond to these things much more kindly. It's not that serious. It's all just a big journey, constant progression towards even more progression, as perfection doesn't exist, so why be so demanding..? It's a-okay to be a little unfinished. Even imperfect flowers bloom.