It’s been a very long time since I posted here.
It’s been an even longer time since I ended my big journey to find myself while traveling through the United States.
My last stop on that trip has been Oklahoma.
At this point I definitely noticed the 23 states and all that working out and leaving places after a couple of days. My bones were weary and my mind was tired.
But my spirit was higher than in a very long time. I felt like a completely different person and yet like I know this person deep down.
Maybe I didn’t really change. Maybe spending time with an illusive bunch of people, meeting strangers and becoming friends with them, testing my body and doing things I have never done before didn’t turn me into a new person. It merely turned me into the person I was always supposed to be.
Did I become stronger? Definitely. Both body and mind.
I knew then that I could do everything I set my mind to.
How I could adapt this person that finally got free with my old life was a completely different story.
I spend my last day in Oklahoma and therefore America with Kris visiting the Oklahoma Bombing museum.
It was a somber and tearful day.
Probably exactly what the side of me that felt like she was leaving already, needed.
The next morning I left for the airport.
I boarded so many planes on this trio.
Took buses, trains, spend time on ferries, drove and used my feet to get from point a to b.
Not a single plane ride went wrong.
Until I tried to fly to Chicago to board my plane back to Germany.
We were delayed for hours before they eventually cancelled my flight to Illinois due to technical problems.
My old self would have accepted defeat being stuck in Oklahoma.
Especially since they already told people that no flight to Chicago was being departed that had seats left.
But the new me did not accept that.
At this point I was so tired and ready to go home. I expected to be in Germany the following morning and my brain did not want to fathom the thought that I might stay longer.
I was in America for 88 days and my family waited at home for me. My dogs waited for me. I was spend.
I felt very American when I told the lady at the counter that I didn’t cared how but they better brought me home someway on this very day.
Eventually they booked me on another airline and send me - ironically - to Atlanta.
It figured, that I would spend my last hours on American turf in the south, the place that captured my heart pretty quickly.
Arriving at Atlanta Hartfield made me really melancholic. I also remembered how frightened I was when I had to fly out of Atlanta my first time.
This gigantic airport that simply overwhelmed me back then.
Two and a half months later I was so familiar with the drill that I felt oddly at home in the thriving environment.
And so it happened that I was send home in an even better flight and made it to my country just half an hour later than I was already expected.
I got back home - not as a new person - but a better version of myself.
Tougher, hardened, leaner, more muscled, with so many experiences and adventures on my shoulders, that little could still rattle me.
Not everything I experienced in America was peachy. Not everything worked out. I didn’t like everything I saw or that happened to me.
I learned a lot about life, happiness, gratitude, about how little you actually need to live. How fast and unexpected your life can change completely.
I learned a hell of a lot about me.
So I drank my last American coffee in Atlanta, shouldered my heavy bags and left to start an unwritten life - not knowing that I would be back at this exact same spot only a very short amount of time later
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