Being Alone and Adaptation

I guess my supervisor is quite worried about me. Last Wednesday after our meeting, again she asked if I feel okay. And if I really feel okay :) I said yes and kidded her by saying this is perhaps what you call adaption - I need to survive :) I was a bit surprised when she answered seriously that yes, when you cannot change it, then you have to adapt.

Of course, I agree with her spirit, that we always have to look for a way to move forward, even though the situation seems impossible to get through. By both dreaming and working to get closer to the dreams that we could actually bear any difficulties without losing our hope, or ourselves. But I am wondering if anybody ever fully adapt to being alone.

Just a few months ago, when I had severe problems with my ex, none of my good friends were physically truly present besides me. We could have contacts via emails and chats, but there were many times when I felt that I had to struggle alone, that nobody could help and I felt very lonely. At that moment, one of my friend answered my complaint: "the stronger you are, the lonelier you will be, but the more you can live with it". I survived. I know I will always survive. Being a foreigner for some - more than 5 years - now and constantly meeting and separating with different people, it was also not the first time, nor the last, that simply there was nobody around sometimes. And since people develop and change, meeting even old good friends sometimes also does not give the same bound-feeling anymore. Everybody will eventually be alone. But is it true that I can really live with it? Or even just get used to it?

Life is like a roller coaster - who was saying that? For me, life is like water stream of a long river. Despite missing people, during the last few years I have been meeting special friends, who have inspired and contributed to shape me like this, whom I always count most as blessing. For the moment I am glad, that life always brings me this blessing, often in unexpected ways. But I am always wondering now: how long this will last. Perhaps now I am too used to seeing things as temporary. Even I am is temporary. Myself changes. I don't have a home. I can go anywhere and I can decide to pursue anything that I wish, which implies again: changing.

This morning I was accidentaly listening to a song that brought some old memories back. It was a song that was touching me during some months in summer and autum 2005, before I got this position in Zurich. It was when I had been looking for a phd position and more certainty in my life for more than a year, when the clock was ticking for me to be kicked out by the immigration while I couldn't have any control on my own path, when my "fate" was depending on people who should try and had promised to find a phd grant for me but found themselves having no time, or hurry, to spend lots of energy in helping me. It was also when I was separating with some of my best friends. I truly felt like that another suitcase in another hall, again and again.

This song is sung much better by Sarah Brightman, but I couldn't find the tag of hers. So, here it is re-sung by Madonna in the film Evita.

Looking back, I think I should be grateful to finally arrive in Zurich, to have a contract for 4 years, which is can be viewed as "almost permanent" compared to my life previously. But people never get satisfied, or perhaps it is just me, who has started to dream again for other things while still having a temporary transit on this path.



And I think I will never get used to being alone ;) not to mention living and being content with it.