A Period of Hysteria

It's August already, a period of hysteria in what had been an ordinary, and even quiet, summer. One day a few weeks ago, Merry told me that she found something like her dream job, at a research institute outside of Copenhagen. "Would you ever consider moving there, doing something like that?"

I thought of idyllic days, cozy nights, simplicity, doing something for ourselves, romantic, unexpected. I've long talked about how my time overseas changed my life. To excuse a painful pun (aren't they all?), it had made the world seem bigger. Now we could do this together.

What begins on the surface propagates downward, and vice versa. I research jobs, rental housing, geography, public transportation, daycare and education, tourist attractions. I spend whole days trying to understand international tax law and then stress about the conclusions. I start having dreams where I can't find Merry, can't find Signe, where my baggage on a trip is lost, where my friends that I live with are all out somewhere, having fun, but I can't contact or find them. When I wake up the sense of the dream lingers with me, as if its still there, just under the surface. What did Jung say? "We're probably dreaming all the time, but consciousness makes too much noise to hear the dream while awake." Every recent morning, waking to orange twilight, I walk through the house with the ghost of a dream trailing a quarter step behind me.

I dwell on such thoughts throughout the mornings, sometimes for the whole day. I look for excuses to avoid work, or leave early. I need to attend to what I'm feeling, though I don't know how. Years ago I might've gone on walks or to a bar to try to kindle something like nostalgia, as if the recollection of joy was a cure to inner turmoil. Now, having used this salve so frequently, I fear that it scarcely remains.

We're both stressed. We'll know soon enough, we tell each other. Merry corresponds with the person who would become her boss. We try to make decisions in a conscientious order. Merry doesn't want to ask for referrals until we rule out the obvious reasons we wouldn't go. The deadline to apply is days away and Merry races to update her resume, write a cover letter, and collect referrals. I've got a sinus infection, and sit drowsily imagining that I can see the decision tree that awaits the submission, but have I ever been right about any complex manner? Do such things ever occur the way you predict?

I start selling things online just in case, as if having five things less will matter when we have to find a home for a thousand. Maybe, amidst days of uncertainty, I'm grasping for anything I can control. People want to buy things but then don't show up. I debate which day to give up on selling our couch and instead drag it out to the curb. It'd be gone in ten minutes. Is it worth the possibility of making $25?

I imagine what toys of Signe's we'd take with, how she'd likely never again use the ones we don't choose. I have to remind myself that they all accrue not to themselves, but to her happiness. It is not a sad thing to leave behind something that she has already found the joy in. By the time we return to the US, she'll be four. If we stay beyond the initial contract of Merry's job, she might be six. Or ten. There's no way to know.

In the first days of this news, I thought mostly of my parents. I wondered whether I could leave them. I thought about it so much, and so often, that I eventually gave up. I had traced over the reasoning for staying or going so many times that there was nothing more of the issue to be explored. Most of the arguments were simplifications. "Leaving them behind." "Being a part of Signe's life." Most things in the modern world are simply matters of what you're willing to trade for them - whether money or other things. Would they buy some plane tickets to see their granddaughter? Would we all trade some comfort for some adventure?

What do we want our lives to be? At first, I thought this question was a philosophical diversion to the real issue, but as the days go on I discover that it is slowly tearing me to shreds. There is no simple answer, no easy way out. In its context, we cannot simply fall back on staying, because I am no more sure of the answer here than I would be anywhere else. I am a writer who doesn't write, and is mediocre at it when I do. I'm a musician who doesn't make music. I'm a literature lover who hasn't read fiction in years. I'm a father who doesn't know how to cherish parenting. I wish to travel by myself and find myself, but I never take the initiative to do so. Maybe with all of these things, I avoid any semblance of a finish line, lest I discover it is a canard - that I am living with an identity that I can never embody. This way, I can go on desiring something. Otherwise, faced with no answer - with a void - I would be forced to start over, to grow.

Isn't Copenhagen a good place for starting over? Not because it's magical, but because it's different? Isn't that what happened the last time? The initial excitement of the possibility of moving having long dissipated, I'm left suspecting that this is its best justification.