Shifting to Fifth but Stuck Between Gears
How not to be present - A cautionary tale
Hey Christina! Apa kabar?
I’m back in Bali, are you free today?
I squeezed my eyes back shut and squealed into my pillow, equal parts glee and resentment. Ecstatic that he even remembered me and wanted to meet up, mortified that I was ten thousand miles too far for this miracle to even matter.
Now that I was fully awake, I checked my other Whatsapp messages.
Heyaaa, am officially in Rotterdam now. Still staying at a hotel until I get to my temporary place mid September, but just letting you know in case you’re coming to Europe hint*hint
Too many emotions, all bubbling up — excitement dread worry hope fear longing — I wailed into my pillow a second time.
Lucky had kept still through the first scream, but he was now visibly concerned. Lucy had decided to see what all the fuss was about and sauntered into the bedroom, tail erect yet snaky.
I needed to feed them, take Lucky on his morning walk, make my coffee, take Lucy outside, then start my day. But so much was happening!
First, Dio, the Greek God I had met at Red Ruby one night and never saw again, was back on the island and wanting to “hang out” with me. Fakkk.
Yet here I was, in Sacramento California, with no romantic prospects, dry as the great American River in this drought, a million miles away from the most beautiful boy I had never met.
Secondly, Astrid was basically asking me to be her roommate in the Netherlands, just days after I had decided I’d move to Holland first before settling in Portugal. It was like she was giving me a preview of my future, the one where I was living in Europe, the one that I literally wrote with a pink marker across the center of my vision board. She had done the hard work, now all I had to do was get there!
And yet here I was, in Sacramento California, house sitting a friend of a friend’s cat and dog for $50/night, with no employment prospects, no way to fund my ticket to Holland, and broker than the homeless lady who was receiving $2100 a month from social security.
One Whatsapp message plunging me into the past and what could have been, the other Whatsapp message tugging me towards the future and what could be.
A small voice in my heart was quivering as it asked, “Christina, what about me? The present moment? Don’t you care about me at all?”
“I mean, yeah, I appreciate you, but you know this wasn’t what I wanted. This was all supposed to be temporary! Fleeting! A stepping stone! I’m grateful to you, but if we’re being honest, I don’t want to be here. I’m sorry if that hurts your feelings. But I don’t want to lead you on. I want to be in Europe, living a great new adventure, or I want to go back to Bali, settling back into a comfort zone that will include a steamy romance with Dio the sculpted Greek dancer. The reason I am here is because I thought, if I planted myself back into the American system, I could magically get my life together. But that plan failed miserably, and the present moment kinda sucks balls for me right now, so please just let me indulge in a fantasy future and stroll down memory lane.”
After I walked Lucky, and let Lucy out, and made my coffee, and everyone was fed and happy, I went on a fired up texting spree.
Sam! Remember that night you me and Yvonne were at Red Ruby and I went up to the cute guy on the dance floor? And then we basically kidnapped him and he went in our car to the next club? And then you dropped us off back to his motorbike and we went to the beach to watch sunrise together? Anyway, he’s back in Bali! You should invite him out next time you go out hehehe…
I took a sip of my mushroom coffee and let my mind wander back to 2019.
Yvonne and Sam were hardcore House music lovers and were heading out to Seminyak for a night of DJ worshipping. Even though I could never properly enjoy House the way they did, I tagged along to witness their seductive neo-noir world of Bali Underground. The night often unfolded with Yvonne dancing right up in front of the DJ, Sam mingling with his dozens of fellow socialites, and me looking for a cute boy.
That night, as the clock approached 3am, my radar scanned and locked on a target on the dance floor. My body headed towards him before my brain could talk me out of it.
“Hi!” I poked my head into his invisible bubble and yelled over the music, “Are you by yourself?” Then I grinned, like I was the host of a dinner party and he had just walked in solo.
He wasn’t the teethy smiley type, definitely not a Sagittarius, but damn was he gorgeous. Sculpted jaws, deep intense eyes, and lips that had been genetically shaped to pout, whether he was pouting or not. He paused, and drank me in with his brooding eyes. Time slowed down, the music became muted, and the people around us faded into a fuzzy blur. He touched my arm and leaned in, so that instead of shouting he could speak firmly…decisively.
“Yes, I am alone, and I am so thirsty for conversation. I am happy to meet you.” He stepped back and looked at me to check if I heard him, and understood him. Red neon lights flickered over his chiseled outline.
“Well I’m here,” I laughed, “We can talk as much as you want now. Drink up!”
There was always a slight delay from where my joke ended and where his eyes lit up and smiled. Maybe it was the language barrier, maybe everything was more serious in his world than it was in mine. But my goal was to make him laugh and fall in love with me, so if some humor had to be lost in translation, I could deal with the awkward lag in between.
A series of pings brought me back to the present moment, on the balcony of The Elms Apartments in Midtown. It was Astrid. I was as eager to read her messages as I was to reply to Dio. One convo for my future, one convo for my past.
I took another sip of my coffee and beamed at her messages.
Astrid:
I’ll be here! Hopefully in the long run. Or move to another European city
But yeah if you come to Europe you can stay with me lah. Don’t need to get a hotel
If you want to apply in Europe or Netherlands at least I do recommend big businesses of software companies
So I think bigger companies are more likely to accept foreigners
Me:
OK Rotterdam ya? I’m gonna look for jobs there
My sister is close to Den Haag and my cousin is outside Amsterdam somewhere
We could be roommates one day!
I was so in awe of Astrid’s journey the past two years. After riding out Covid in Bali, we both had similar dreams of living big city lives in some European city. And look, she finally did it! She even managed to get a job in her chosen field - sustainability.
I wondered if I could really make it happen too. Should I stick to my totally reasonable plan of becoming a brilliant copywriter overnight? Or should I apply to a big tech conglomerate, and possibly get a proper work visa too? I wondered what Astrid’s apartment would look like…would we have a cute balcony and keep a dozen hanging hipster plants alive? And imagine doing cute photoshoots in those narrow Dutch alleys-
“But Christina, you are here, now. Aren’t you excited for today? For Tuesday, or even Saturday? What are we going to do this weekend?” Heart was getting angry.
“Hmm? This weekend? I don’t know Heart…it’s so much easier to dream about the future, or reminisce the past, than it is to grind out this seemingly endless transition. Right now my only light is Kristina. Whatever job I get, whatever lofty goal I fail to achieve, I’ll look back one day and be grateful to have spent my days laughing with my best friend. Other than that, being present is not where my heart is. Maybe if I take some adderall I can get something meaningful done.”
“Or maybe, you need to get some DICK. Snap you back to reality, to the here and now — so you can stop self pitying your sorry ass!”
“Whoa, heart was that you? Who’s in there? Vagina is that you? Who the fu-”
The following week, I was feeling pretty good before my therapy session. Depression? Pretty much handled. I had big goals to work on, I didn’t have time for all that.
I had been working on my copywriting assignments, and it felt like the old Christina was back — the one with entrepreneurial hustle, the one that became a professional photographer, and the one that had started a digital media company in Bali. My confidence was slowly resurfacing from murky grief-spilled waters.
I must have been talking too much about the future though, because half an hour into the session, my lovely therapist asked me, “Can you drive stick?”
My eyes lit up. “Oh yeah I grew up driving stick,” I boasted proudly.
“Well, you know when you’re in between gears, and you press on the gas, and you can’t go forwards or backwards, because you’re just stuck?”
“Yeah…” My gloating simmered swiftly. To be fair, last time I made that rookie mistake I was 12.
“That’s what’s happening to you right now. You’re so caught up in the past, ’should’ve done this should’ve done that’, and the future, ‘could do this could do that’, that now you’re completely stuck between gears — unable to move at all.”
Welp. Goodbye good mood, hello incoming tears.
She continued, “You have a very hard time staying present. And it’s keeping you stuck.”
Tell me about it lady. I literally just wrote a blog post about it. Sigh. This is what Tika keeps scolding me for too.
“What would it looked like,” she said, “if you were really living in the present? In Sacramento? ”
Aaaand here come the tears. I didn’t have a good answer for her. I really just want to fast-forward past this yucky sticky hard transition so so badly. It was becoming clear my only immediate job prospects, the kind of jobs you needed when you were really out of savings, were entry level minimum wage jobs alongside River City’s 16 year old highschool students at one of the Southport Town Center’s stores. Going back to the military felt like a better option at this point.
But her question did make me think about Astrid’s journey. I had replied to her life update with:
Damn dude it all worked out
I’m such an overthinker. I need to get on the Astrid train 🚉
In response to this, Astrid reminded me that her journey was far from easy. How awful it felt when a family friend ignored her plea for help. How scary it was to not know anyone in the Netherlands, and that she might have ended up homeless a few weeks before her new job was starting. How expensive and stressful and uncertain it all had been.
Then after hundreds of job applications, a few unpaid internships, and sleeping on friend’s couches in different countries, Astrid finally achieved what she’d set out to do.
But people don’t see that part. They don’t witness the struggle, the tears, the frustration. They only see the ending, the one where you get the apartment and the job and the paid holidays…Shouldn’t it be the grueling voyage that’s celebrated? Shouldn’t one’s taxing expedition be the highlight of public praise?
Anyway. The lesson is clear — to be present blablabla. My therapist gave me some homework. She said every time I start thinking that “I should have done this, should have done that”, I need to catch myself and bring myself to the here and now. Same thing for “When I live there, or once I do that”.
Will I listen to her? Right now, probably not. I’ve got plans, man, places to be and people to do! Will this inflict more suffering upon myself? Of course!
I can’t wait til the day I can send a text like Astrid’s. Or tell Dio that I’m back. And make mad money as a badass copywriter. And fly Kristina out to my condo in Portugal. And cruise around the Mediterranean with Anita.
This probably isn’t the ending you wanted, you’re probably shaking your head going ’No Christina Nooo’. But humans are messy and I’m messy and right now I’m racing towards a future that might not exist because it’s all I can think about. It’s all I want.
The point is, do as my therapist says, not as I do. One day I will too.
