On 2024

Adulthood means doing something that you know will be good for you even if you don’t feel like it. So I went out for a run in minus two degrees instead of decaying on my olive green sofa with Cruel World playing on repeat with a neverending love affair between Hans and Katharina in East Berlin at the end of the 1980s.

Because you’re young, you’re wild, you’re free

You’re dancing circles around me

You’re fucking crazy

People say running clubs are the new dating apps. So I joined the only running club to see if people were better looking while they ran against the cold and darkness of this country. Yet, I could barely see their faces, let alone try to date them. Perhaps that’s the whole point; that you might actually like their personalities when both of you are sweaty and out of breath. Murakami is known for being that runner writer. He runs for writing. He writes about running. I can’t think of any female writers who run. I wonder what they are doing for their creative process.

“I have to dance.” I thought to myself. I have to move so I can let my thoughts flow out of my body. So I spent 5 hours on a dance floor filled with flashy neon lights and stared at the face (and his hands) of a cute DJ for as long as I wanted.

I shed a few tears after waving goodbye to my niece and parents. That’s how I know my heart is still soft against this Cruel World. Then my thoughts were stuck. I didn’t know where did they go.

I spent two months of my 2024 interning in a psychiatric hospital close to Washington D.C. as a full-time dance therapist. Where fights broke out in between my body. Where tall men were yelling and flirting. Where children smashed things and bit. Where patients expressed their gratitude to me. Where they told me I should stay in the US. “You know, you don’t have to go back to Germany”, said a teenage girl diagnosed with personality and eating disorder, who rejected dance therapy in the first place.

Where life is so immense in front of me that I can almost die from it.

In 2024 I made a conscious decision to stay. Not for the sake of staying but rather to take a leap of faith that I can write the biggest piece of work I’ve ever created so far. Then I realized how long and deep this dive required me. It seems neverending. On the other hand, life requires me to go on another long and deep dive. I started to have doubts that I could go both ways. Then my thoughts got stuck. Then 2024 turned to 2025. Life feels surreal. The past keeps coming back. I can’t seem to get rid of it. (Of course, the past keeps coming back, it’s asking me to rewrite everything I’ve built about my universe so far.)

Then there was a rape, which created a black hole inside of me. I didn’t cry. I let the tears wash me over. So I said to myself, I have to be brighter than this black hole. I have to. I have to otherwise I cannot hold on to this thread.

I shed more tears when my friend handed me a handwritten letter and told me to read it on the flight. I opened and read it at the boarding gate when liking myself wasn’t the easiest those days.

I’m so tired of my therapist. I thought to myself after my very first session with him in 2025. How ironic. You’re not tired of your therapist; you’re tired of yourself. Therapy is not the answer. How could it be? I’m asking some questions that are larger than life itself. With questions that are larger than life, you have to seek the answers in art. In 2024, on my birthday eve, I wrote down, “The real inner work starts now. It starts when you’re tired.” Just feeling tired, or tired of what? I didn’t write down this part. Perhaps that’s all what it’s about. Witnessed the Cruel World and be brighter than that. Life just keeps on getting better and better.

“Only when it gets dark then you realize how bright you can be.”

He wiped my tears away with his thumb while lying naked next to me. I don’t remember when was the last time someone touched me like that.

It all started somewhere. But where? Look harder. You’ll find the thread where it all begins. Life stopped feeling like a linear process for me long ago. Experiences and memories are wormholes that transcend beyond time and space, joining the present and the past together so you get to experience both moments simultaneously which makes it even harder to find the beginning of the thread.

2025 New Year Resolutions

• I want to touch people’s souls
• I want to live an abundant and content life, with a clear conscience
• I want the people around me to live an abundant and fulfilling life
• I want peace and time of my own
• I want to be loved; I want to love
• I want to be closer to myself
• I want to surrender
• I want to trust myself
• I want to create, and make art
• I want to live a life full of colors
• I want to make the best use of this one-way ticket
• I want to become light