Amdam

Sometimes I think there’s no such thing as the “real world.” 

Upon reflection, every stage of my life I felt on a precipice.

When I was a kid, going to high school and getting my driver’s license seemed like a monumental turning point. When I gazed out at neighbors going to prom, they seemed so “adult” to me, and posh.

Come high school, I did not feel adult or posh. 

College became the turning point. Then it was graduating college. Then grad school. Then getting my professional counseling license. Only to jump ship.

Catch my drift? The "real world" was always just around the corner. Aka, unattainable.

Now I’m ironically back in high school as a counselor. At my last counseling job, I was younger than most of my clients. Here, I have age on my side. Roles are clearly defined. Only … I still had to pick a “first day of school” outfit and explain to some teachers why I don’t have a hall pass. 

A wise housemate of mine, in law school, told me we never stop having “first day of school” moments, no matter what stage of life we’re in. This struck me as oddly true. It left me wondering.

When do we enter the “real world?” Like officially. 

I pondered this question over a long walk, until it dawned on me that there was no point straining my brain. I had already tackled questions about what’s “real” to me in a country that, ironically, looked straight out of a fairytale. The Netherlands. 

I had my heart set on the Netherlands ever since my sister’s college friend from Utrecht stayed with my family for the holidays when I was 19. She was only four years older than me, but she had already backpacked around the world. Solo. And though she loved all her travels, her passion was most palpable when speaking about her home country. I wanted to experience it for myself, though I was also terrified to. A couple people told me I wasn’t cut out for going abroad. And though I desperately wanted to prove them wrong, I honestly wondered the same thing myself. 

Since Amsterdam wasn’t one of my school’s designated options, it would have been very easy to give up altogether.  The process of appealing to go and applying for a visa there was, well, a shitstorm. 

But I was determined. One thing I’ve never shied away from is a challenge.  

And a challenge it was indeed. Amsterdam is a relatively small city, but somehow my classes were still very far apart from each other. Like, 45 minute bike rides apart. As I practiced the routes over and over again on my first days, I only got more overwhelmed. It didn’t help that all the locals towered over me. What had I got myself into?!! 

My apartment was situated in Funenpark, a German influenced area of the city. Modern. Unadorned. Uninviting.

My roommate looked like a blonde model, and her personality more than took up the square footage of our studio. 

She hated every time I chewed. It was a real life Galinda/Elpheba situation and I of course was the wicked witch.

We put aside our differences by the end of the semester, but it was a blessing in disguise that I was not initially thrilled with my living situation. It gave me the motivation I needed to get out of the apartment every day. To get lost on purpose. I explored almost every corner of Amsterdam. I checked out more exhibits, cafes, and monuments than I did in the place I grew up. I ditched my map the second week in. I even got comfortable cutting through the red light district.

I used to be overly concerned that I looked too young without makeup. Throughout college until that point, I wore it daily just to look my age.

Facades washed away with my Funenpark building mates pretty early on, quite literally. It downpoured almost every day that first month we were there. Makeup was unnecessary if not an actual hindrance. This was another blessing in disguise. I learned to appreciate my persona without it. 

Biking and uncovering a city together was a bonding experience like no other. During the weekends, you could find us gallivanting through the Dutch countryside, chomping on stroopwafels, or visiting college friends in surrounding European countries. Every place that I visited, I learned.

This was not like the family vacations I went on as a kid (as great as those were), or even the international student programs I went on in high school. I had to direct myself. Get by on my own. If I missed a flight (which did happen once), it was up to me to figure out a solution. I learned to get comfortable talking to strangers, sometimes in foreign languages. Somewhere among the airports, Van Gogh museums, and canals, I became aware of mental cages I had unknowingly placed on myself. This laid the groundwork for what was about to be one of the most exhilarating trips of my life.

My Funenpark friend group became quite tight-knit by the end of our stay. Enough that we decided to all travel together to Arbaz, Switzerland one long weekend, and take up residence on top of a mountain. This remains the closest I’ve ever come to living off the grid. To acquire groceries, we had to hike all the way down the mountain and then climb back up with them. 

Best picnic of my life was on the side of that mountain. And it was just a loaf of fresh bread split amongst us during a climbing break. 

It was pretty epic being able to step out of our chalet and see views that looked so majestic it felt like a green screen. Just being there was an adventure in and of itself, but of course I wanted to maximize it further. So I joined the friends of mine that wanted to hike. No trails, no maps. Our destination became a waterfall that looked deceptively close (it was not). By the time it finally came within reach we had to cross over a very steep incline to get to it. One misstep and we would have fallen to our death. It was a risk we decided to take.

I’ve experienced many waterfalls in my life, but none have ever felt so rewarding as making it to that one.

In order for us to catch the flight we needed back to Amsterdam an all-nighter was necessary. We spent twilight boarding a bus down the mountain (after hollering through many renditions of American Pie while we waited for it). Come dawn, we were traversing through random cities with castles to get to the train station in Geneva. Some of the prettiest towns I’d ever gone through, but I could not possibly repeat their names. 

Gallivanting through the Swiss alps! Not for the faint of heart <3

I think we all returned from that trip enlightened. Experiencing the world from so far out and so far up shifted our perspective discernibly. What better city to come back to in that state, than Amdam?

Riding a bike in my high school days was a ton of fun, and gave me a taste of independence, but it did not make me feel like an adult in the “real world.” In the Netherlands, it did.

Biking is not a hobby or sport there. It’s a legitimate (and preferred) method of transportation. Amsterdam is a city where you’d spot young kids cycling to markets by themselves, or weighing in on politics. Rather than placing limitations on them, they grow up in a society that allows them to have their own agency. Much more so than in America, if I may be so bold.

I guess it was only natural that I grew up there myself. 

By the time I started my senior year in college (back in America), I felt a noticeable change. My confidence went from being external to internal. I left a hipster and returned a hippie.

I always thought “adulting” would be outwardly visible. But what I learned in Amsterdam was that it is the invisible choices that matter most. Makeup and milestones didn’t catapult me into adulthood, nor did my actual age. It was a mindset, achieved by breaking out of molds, confronting fears, and climbing mountains. It can look different for everyone. That’s what it looked like for me. 

Part of why I love Halloween is that I see it as a “demasking” of sorts. An opportunity to showcase on the outside a side of ourselves that may not typically be seen, through the use of a costume.

And part of why I dislike the concept of “the real world” is that it feels, ironically, put on. Fake.

If we are waiting on external validation to take ourselves seriously, we may never get it. By the time people start guessing my age correctly, I may be a senior citizen. But I know the wisdom hidden in my youthful countenance. If people want to Peter Pan me, I’m here for it.  No, actually. I’m pretty sure I’ll go through an identity crisis the day I stop getting carded. 

To quote one of my favorite movies (Pirates of the Caribbean) “you best start believing in ghost stories miss Turner…you’re in one.”

We are in this thing called life, that often feels out of our hands. But it’s not set. It’s always moving. Imperceptibly fast, or gravitationally slow. We have the capability to choose how we want to make sense of it. What we want to strive for, and stand for. That can happen at any age, in any place. 

For me it just so happened to be, most discernibly, in Funenpark, Amsterdam

and Arbaz, Switzerland.