Wednesday, April 12, 2023 // The Statement — 7
I have a confession to make:
Despite my seemingly positive
travel posts and a frenzied roulette
of indulgent Instagram stories, I can
find no other words to describe the
last five months of my life beyond
“utterly taxing.” The easy-going
charade I like to do isn’t some-
thing that can withstand the more
stressful periods of my life — it’s a
seam that frays and unravels in the
presence of “real-world” responsi-
bilities: Pressing papers and peer
reviews, finding the right job or not
the right job, or even finding any job
at all. And that was the standard phi-
losophy for the majority of my life.
For better or for worse, my
hyper-independence and deter-
mination to prove myself to oth-
ers, to make something of myself
while I still have the breath in me,
to show everyone that I was here
and that I — like everybody else —
have loved and have lost, feels like
a choking hazard. I can’t recall the
last time I called something other
than my suitcase “home,” nor do I
remember the last time I bought a
full-size cosmetic product over the
conventional travel-size bottle. As
with everything, there are upsides
and downsides to such a nomadic
lifestyle; while it’s quite simple to
enjoy this kind of life for a week
or two at a time, it’s another thing
entirely to live in it, to bask in the
temporariness of every particle that
surrounds me in a way where you
don’t find yourself sobbing all alone
at night in a cramped studio apart-
ment in Berlin.
It’s no secret that everyone
wants to go out into the grandiose
world of teeming possibilities and
accomplish great feats for your own
namesake, but how do you begin to
trust yourself to do just that? How
do I become as soft and adaptable as
the tree branches that can withstand
the brutish hailstorms and racing
winds of darker times, while still re-
maining as firm and grounded as the
roots hanging on deep under the
Earth? If I wanted to pretend like I
knew the answer to this, I’d write a
self-help book — but if I wanted to
spit out my amalgamation of odd ex-
periences in the hopes of stumbling
upon one phrase or sentence that
could help someone, I’d write an
article for The Michigan Daily.
The first series of stitches
began to give way in October of
last year, when my lighthearted es-
sence was shoved out in favor of
more pragmatic responsibilities,
like the various application cycles
that ate up my evenings and week-
ends, bouncing from short answer
to short answer while still attempt-
ing to find the time to show up to
class and make it seem like I had, in
fact, completed the required read-
ings for that day. Between that, my
commitment to a short-term stint as
a communications intern with the
Department of Earth and Environ-
ment, and the ever lingering pres-
ence of financial, familial and flirta-
tious woes, I had sort of delved into
a state of psychosis by December.
Actually, the term “sort of”
would be inaccurate — I had devel-
oped full-blown spiritual psychosis
just a few days before Christmas, a
period that would precede another
four long weeks of something akin
to asceticism. I don’t remember
anything from that awkward limbo
of a month, just the fact that I would
wake up and spend my entire day
reading theological and metaphysi-
cal theory for hours on end — not
eating, not drinking and barely
sleeping — for I had been convinced
that I was on the precipice of some
divine revelation. I read Dante’s
“Divine Comedy” in its entirety, as
well as a few books about Carl Jung,
the “Book of Revelations” and — for
some reason — my high school year-
book.
To pretend that I was sane be-
fore I had left for Europe would be
an absurdity. But, believe me or not,
my pseudo-obsession with some
undefinable holistic truth proved to
be essential during my time abroad.
Leaving behind everything from a
few pairs of pants to the vanity of my
ego, I had shoved my belongings
into my bags a few hours prior to my
flight, nearly missing my plane from
Las Vegas to Copenhagen. I sprint-
ed across the Harry Reid Interna-
tional Airport with my checked bag-
gage in hand as I prayed and prayed
to get there before the boarding
gate closed, losing my two most
valuable pocket knives in the secu-
rity check process. Before I knew
it, I had jetted off to another conti-
nent with no semblance — no proof
— of my former self. My leaving for
Europe was a sort of self-instigated
christening, you could say, as the
only thing I had left to do was put on
my big red headphones, stare out-
side of the plane window and think
about all of the things I needed to
finally leave behind me.
I’m not quite sure how I sur-
vived that period of my life — and the
last thing I want to do is romanticize
psychosis — but it was the constant
yearning for something new, the tri-
als and tribulations I underwent to
find my “self,” as overused as that
word may be, it was perhaps the key
to surviving my time abroad. There
are several essential lessons I gath-
ered during my quasi-conscious
reading sessions of various intellec-
tual works.
***
I like to think that airport run-
ways are as short as they are for a
reason. Had we been born immor-
tal, I am not sure that there would
be any incentive to do things that
scare us — and I don’t mean the but-
terflies you get from asking your
crush out, I’m talking about an oth-
erworldly fear that bleeds into every
other area of your life and has you
doubting your every step.
At one point in my life (and for
legal reasons, happened in Europe
when I was older than 18), I had a
one too many glasses of a shitty,
high ABV wine — I can’t quite re-
member if it was white or rosé,
nor does it matter all that much
now — and having just purchased
a stick-and-poke kit, I decided to
experiment that night by awkwardly
stamping the words “be here now”
into the medial side of my right mid-
dle finger. Classy, I know.
I’ve been meaning to get the
words reworked professionally for
almost two years now, but I just
haven’t had the guts to think about
what should be there instead. What
kind of lettering would suit it best?
Serif or sans-serif? Times New Ro-
man? A timeless Helvetica? I’d say
I’m more a fan of Helvetica Neue.
VALERIJA MALASHEVICH
Statement Contributor
Design by Grace Filbin
A beginner’s guide to coping with change
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