Where the Map Made No Sense

Marlena: I’d just completed my master’s degree and had returned to my native Germany from Copenhagen. I found that all my peers had automatically adopted the mindset of being grown-ups and were systematically embarking on the sensible path of getting jobs, building up their careers and earning money.

I, on the other hand, had opted for a volunteering job at an NGO, which is something most people do when they are a little bit younger, perhaps fresh out of college. And even stranger, out of all the options available, I’d applied for opportunities in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan or Georgia, the one in Europe, in that order of preference. I would be gone for a whole year.

My choice of opting for those places was not at all rational and I have no idea what put that region on my radar in the first place other than perhaps curiosity about little known post-soviet era countries.

I would be stepping away from the familiarity of Europe, as well as from my boyfriend, whom I’d been with for almost a year at that point. People around me weren’t being that supportive of my decision either and I truly couldn’t explain why I was going ahead with it, other than to say that a strong feeling was telling me I just had to do it.

When it comes to big decisions in life, I have always found that when I don’t listen to my mind and just follow my gut, things actually pan out quite nicely. I knew to trust that.

That same strong feeling was also saying that I would end up being placed in Georgia and soon this was confirmed. I was to be stationed in Tbilisi, the capital

I said what I thought was a temporary goodbye to my boyfriend in Germany and headed to Georgia for the year.

The nature of the relationship with my boyfriend was such that we both had fairly busy lives and weren’t living in the same place so we would only catch up on weekends.

Having such an active tempo was something that I thrived in, something that fueled and fulfilled me, yet I also sensed that I longed for a base, a nest, the kind of existence that would make me say, “I’m home.”

My boyfriend was someone who checked all the boxes, someone that my parents would approve of but since I’d moved to Georgia and had time to experience things from afar, I’d been growing increasingly aware of my unhappiness.

Being long-distance now, all we had was verbal communication and I realized our chats were mostly small talk and fairly superficial. I hadn’t yet realized that this was actually a reflection of the lack of emotional depth in our relationship and so I was always left with this feeling of deficiency that I just couldn’t pinpoint and transfer from my subconscious into my conscious reasoning.

Suddenly without the cover of my distraction packed, fast-paced life, the relationship was standing naked right in front of me and I was trying very hard not to look at it lest I had to acknowledge its flaws. Everything fit so well on paper, how could he not be the right one for me? It was a dance of avoidance between me and myself. One of us was bound to get tired.

The bland, arid landscape of that relationship was actually going to be quite important in terms of the contrast it set to all that was to follow when I met Elie, but I had no idea of that at the time.