In less than an hour, I'll be hopping on my last plane departing from Copenhagen Airport for the journey that will eventually land me in Milwaukee. As I sit at my gate, staring at the grey skies and classic Danish drizzle, sipping a Tuborg Guld beer, it seems all I can do is reflect a little on my past six months in this crazy, beautiful place called Denmark. I apologize in advance, as this post will be far more stoic and stream-of-consciousness than my typical style, but I think it's the only honest way to put what I'm feeling into words.
Leaving sucks. It is incredibly difficult to strive towards building a life in a totally new place with totally new people only to have that ripped away six months later; it is emotionally exhausting in a way that few other experiences are. Copenhagen has proven to be an incredibly livable city, and I will be surprised if I don't spend another chunk of my life here in the coming decades; this makes leaving all the harder. I probably look like an idiot contorting my face as I type on my laptop in an effort to maintain some composure and hold back my tears. These past few weeks, as the number of international students and friends has shrunk to single digits, I have had the opportunity to bike around and re-discover Copenhagen in a way that allowed me to re-live many of the best experiences that I had earlier in the semester; this makes leaving all the harder. From parks, to bars, to campus, to shops, to streets, to squares, to buildings, to neighborhoods, I have countless memories that will stay with me for many, many years, but for now they do very little but bring a pang of the bittersweet feeling of leaving somewhere I love.
Saying goodbye sucks. Some students began leaving as early as May. At first we held reunion dinners and bar meet-ups to say goodbye. We would hug and laugh and cry together as we lost friends one by one. As of yesterday, when I was grabbing my last pints at Studenterhuset, I was surrounded by nearly all of my friends still in Denmark and we totaled six (seven if you include Jakob the bar manager who sat with us for a while). Saying goodbye to a friend, sometimes people who are as close to you as your siblings, every few days for two months is emotionally exhausting. By the time I was hugging some of my best friends goodbye this past weekend, I couldn't even cry about it anymore as it was so normal. This isn't all bad, building up a bit of a thick skin has actually made the goodbyes more fluid and casual, which is my style anyway. But 25 plus goodbyes takes its toll, and has both prepared me for my own goodbye as well as leaving me with such little emotional capital that that goodbye can ring hollow. That's how goodbyes work, though, and I have found a way to accept that even if I don't like it.
Packing your life into a suitcase sucks. I have had to leave behind a number of clothing items, trinkets, souvenirs of sorts (such as tickets and pamphlets), and even just foodstuffs. Relating back to building a life and then ditching it, a part of who you are, who you identify as, is reflected in the things you fill your room with. Abandoning some of those things feels like a certain betrayal to a part of yourself that you found in a new place. I knew this is how it works; I've done it thrice before, if you count packing prior to exchange as well. That doesn't make the experience and better or easier, though. I don't even keep that much stuff! I tend to live rather minimally, with only a few pairs of pants, the shirts I wear most, and a couple jackets for different temperatures. But the things you accrue from travels and simple daily life can build up rapidly and without warning, leaving you with items representing memories you wish never to forgot. Packing that up and dragging it halfway around the world would be emotionally exhausting if I weren't already emotionally exhausted.
Everything is bittersweet. The 'don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened' adage is, quite frankly, bullshit. We can feel one, the other, or both emotions at the same time, and that's perfectly fine. Reflecting upon my time here during these past few weeks has brought back so many happy memories that I can help but smile, and even laugh out loud, at the times I had with some of the best people on Earth. I have had so many moments experiencing beautiful places with beautiful people and I know how fortunate I have been to have had those experiences, making me feel all the happier. At the same time, I know I won't be seeing the vast majority of these people for years; some I may never meet again. The knowledge that these memories are all that I will have for the time being is a difficult idea to actually come to terms with. Intellectually I can understand how that is, what it means, and the likelihood of seeing various people again, but emotionally it feels like my best friends--my new family--are impossibly far away and it will take a miracle for our paths to cross. This feeling of helplessness would be emotionally exhausting if I weren't already emotionally exhausted.
Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end. This adage I can get behind. Our lives are full of chapters that criss-cross over each other, but many chapters can only begin after another has ended: starting university after graduating high school, leaving friends and family to meet new friends and do new things abroad, return to those old friends after parting the new ones you have made. We can't do and experience everything at once, that simply isn't how the world works and it isn't how life works. Accepting this is something that people struggle with their entire lives, if that weren't so then the death of a loved one would be just another day, but this struggle allows for introspection and self-evaluation that is absolutely critical for growth and learning. This struggle is also emotionally exhausting, and it would be for me now, too, if I weren't already emotionally exhausted.
Every experience can be a learning experience, and everything learned can be applied to a future experience. Pastries are great. Denmark produces some of the finest pastries to have ever graced our planet. When I return home, you can bet that I'll be grabbing a kringle, or a kanal snegl (Danish cinnamon rolls), or a jelly doughnut, or whatever else is available much more frequently than I ever did before. This isn't life-changing in and of itself; pastries aren't going to create world peace or solve poverty, but the notion of enjoying simple pleasures and spending a little money on a temporary, but pleasurable, experience is something that can be life-changing. Denmark has taught me that parks are great, families are great, history is great, architecture is great, wandering is great, getting lost is great, meeting people for one night is great, running across somewhere you never expected to see again is great; there are so many things in this world that are great that we allow to slip by us every single day. If you're reading this at work, at the library, studying, doing some kind of work, stand up and go take a walk in your nearest park. Seriously, go ahead, I'll wait... Are you back? Good. Wasn't that lovely? Wasn't that time well spent, even though it was time doing "nothing"? Oh ya, doing "nothing" is great too. These are the things that are emotionally invigorating, if that's the perfect antonym of exhausting. It is these things that will bring me peace and clarity in the coming weeks and months and revive me from my state of emotional exhaustion.
The only constant is change. If it's any indication, the sun is shining brightly and the clouds outside look lovely, despite the grey and rain not more than an hour ago. Time is something that, unless you can travel at near-light-speeds, no one can alter. Sure, Einstein explained that relativity is the difference in perceiving time when you're "with a pretty girl" and you "put your hand on a hot stove", but time itself cannot be slowed when we wish to live in a moment forever, nor can it be sped up when we wish to get past an experience as soon as possible. Sometimes that time isn't enough; sometimes there will be too many places and people to see and too much work and learning to do. Other times time will exist for far too long; sometimes there will be too many bad meetings and boring conversations that must be had and too much pain and sorrow to endure. We don't get to decide the rate of time, though, so we must work with it as best as possible. Furthermore, time only moves forward. This is obvious, I hope, but it is critical to how we live our lives and enjoy experiences. If we could return to any point in our lives at any time, why would we ever need to live in the moment? Why would we ever shed a tear or laugh until we can't breath, knowing that we can relive that same experience and infinite number of times? Even the dreaded "YOLO" would be a pointless sentiment. So instead we must live in the moment, we must cry when we are sad, and we must laugh when we are happy, because only at that time and in that moment can we truly experience every sound, smell, taste, emotion, and thought. Only this way can we form memories that are so strong and so important that we can get close to travelling back in time and reliving those moments. Through these experiences can our soul be rejuvenated and we can become emotionally invigorated.
My plane is boarding and the line is growing long, much like this post, so I think I'll wrap things up here. I wish I could write more about the positives, but right now that's not what's on my mind. Soon I'll write a post about my months after class during the most beautiful month of weather Denmark has ever experienced. Goodbye Copenhagen, thank you for everything. Goodbye all of my friends, you are the ones who really made my experience worthwhile. Goodbye Danish lifestyle, I will miss the nuances of Scandinavian life. Hello again America, my old friend, let's see how we can get along now after my six months away.
