IS THIS REAL LIFE and Other Questions I Asked Myself During My Weekend Trip to Europe
As I sit here writing this in my bed after having eaten a bowl of cereal with maybe expired-maybe not expired milk, I am still in utter shock. I have no words for what my life is right now.
I guess it all started with two things: God and Megan.
God first--as He should be.
My feelings towards God have been iffy as of late. Life events caused me to reevaluate my faith and religion. The one thing that had been a constant for my entire life was suddenly a source of confusion and mistrust. Life events also caused a riff within myself, and I suddenly became unrecognizable to myself. Like that James Bay lyric, "I used to recognize myself // it's funny how reflections change." I suddenly developed anxiety, and it rears its ugly head at the most inconvenient times. Usually when what's happening around me is out of my control.
Exhibit A: unforeseen changes in travel plans
Secondly, Megan--my friend Megan. She is an expert in all things Belgium in our friend group, and left me a list of sites and places to see while I spent the weekend in Brussels. She sent me this list a couple of days before I left for Brussels, and at the end of the list, she left a note that read: "These suggestions all with a grain of salt; plans always change, and it’s nice to keep schedules flexible. " After this weekend, I'm convinced that Megan is psychic because almost nothing went as planned.
I pretty much got into the European Union from the United Kingdom illegally.
Almost.
I walked up to my gate at the airport all fine and dandy--I'd just eaten some cabanara, so the hangry Reina was at bay--hand my boarding pass over with my passport and start to space out when the woman at the counter tells me I needed my visa checked still. With 15 minutes left to board the plane.
Cue: panic mode!!
Because there was virtually no time to go back downstairs for a visa check, the woman marked my boarding pass after checking my visa stamp from June, and I was able to fly over to Belgium with zero problems. First crisis averted. But, you know my life is never easy, and one crisis is too easy, so on to the next.
Saturday I'd planned a day trip to Amsterdam. I booked some dirt-cheap tickets on a coach bus that was to leave the train station at 6:30am. So, I haul my behind out of bed at 5:20am, leave my hostel at 5:45am, arrive at the wrong bus stop at 6:05am, then meander on over to the right bus stop by 6:15am. 6:30am, and there's no Amsterdam bus in site. 7am, still no bus. 7:30am, there's a bus to Paris, but no Amsterdam. At least thirty folks all trying to get to Amsterdam are calling and texting and calling and getting in touch with no one from the bus company because it's too early and their offices are closed--or the numbers they'd provided were unavailable!
Around 7:45am, we're able to get a hold of someone and find out that the bus is coming from London, and will be delayed for at least another hour. So, most of us head inside the train station to a small coffee shop. Three of us pull up seats by the window to keep an eye out for the bus: myself, a 24 year old radio journalist from France, and a 45 year old farmer/English teacher from Taiwan. All three of us were traveling alone, and enjoyed doing so. All three of us found that we had to have been meant to meet each other, and perhaps that's why the bus was late. It was like a scene out of a movie. The farmer/English teacher kept insisting that myself and the journalist needed to enjoy traveling while we were young and to see everything there was to see before settling down and having families because she felt she'd missed out on a lot by not going out into the world when she was younger. Myself and the journalist were rather impressed with her life story, as it seemed like she'd done everything: she'd gone to school for psychology and secondary education, but ended up working jobs completely unrelated to her degree--for some time, she even worked with computers. She'd lived all over the world with her husband who traveled often for work, but still, she felt as though she were just now getting out into the world, even after living in Brazil, Houston, Chicago, Scotland, and Vancouver--just to name a few.
Sunday, I was set to fly back to Scotland. What wasn't expected was the massive panic attack that started right before boarding the plane. The state of panic and high levels of anxiety continued well after we'd landed, after I'd taken the shuttle back into Edinburgh, even after I'd reached the train station that was to take me back to the university. But like I said, my life is never easy. I was a wreck. Part of my misery was fueled by having found a bald patch at the front of my hairline--cringe. I waited at the station for nearly forty five minutes before getting on the wrong train, hopping off at the last second, then finding out that I had to wait another full freaking hour to get on the right train before riding said train for nearly an hour to get back to the university. My feet were ashy. Chocolate from my Belgium waffle earlier in the day had dripped onto my ashy toe and was now crusted on. Head to toe, I was a mess.
As I was trying to settle myself with some music, a woman walked up to me with her grandson and said she loved my hair. I wanted to cry, "but I have a bald patch!" but instead I smiled and thanked her. She kept walking. Five minutes later, the same woman and grandson came back around. She asked where I was from, then laughed and said I didn't have a very "gringo" accent, that she was surprised I was American. She was from Costa Rica, but had been living in Scotland for some time. She was headed to the same town as me. The whole rest of the hour wait, and then the hour-long train ride back to town, we talked--about struggles growing up, about what we liked to do, where we wanted to live once we were older...of course, about Trump (I don't think there's been a single person yet that hasn't asked about him). In the end, she offered me a job tutoring her grandson in English for the rest of my time in Scotland.
But that's not what stuck out to me most about our conversation.
She spoke of how someone very close to her had had narrow-minded views, but was changed after an accident. She kept saying how she'd expected him to go back to their old ways once they recovered, but they never did. She spoke of how some of her struggles in her youth she now saw as a gift. She spoke of how the accident was a gift to her loved one, as it had changed his prospective on life. She said something along the lines of how she was convinced that good could come from what was seemingly so bad.
And again, she complimented my hair.
I asked myself if this was real life. What kind of Miracle on 34th Street was this? Is this a Lifetime movie? Some kind of prank TV show?
For as long as I've been upset with God, He's still allowed random little miracles like these to happen and remind me of the good that can come. Like little signs to ease my confusion, and comfort me when I need it most. Maybe you don't believe in God--but hopefully you believe in good. It's not always there at the forefront, but good somehow seems to find a way to be seen when you least expect it. I'm no expert in faith, but I have faith in the good. It usually turns up one way or another--even after long weekends where everything seemed to go wrong.
Love and light,
Reina
