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

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