I was working as a copywriter in an ad agency in New York. I was doing well. I had won an Emmy award for a commercial I had written. My boss had given me a book as a present. In the inside cover, he wrote: 'one day, all of New York will know your name'.
I had a job I was good at, friends, a little apartment, a cat and gym membership. I also had a green card and a shelves full of books I had collected from Shakespeare books, Strand books and even Barnes and Noble. I had a handsome, intelligent, hardworking boyfriend who lived in Germany. So I quit my job and said goodbye to my friend and gave away my books.
I got on a plane and went to live in Germany where I had no friends and no job. In retrospect, it seems like a bad decision.
My handsome boyfriend picked me up from the airport and took me back to his apartment. It was in an industrial area behind the train station. It had fluorescent green sofas and a wall-to-wall carpet to match. There was no mat under the carpet so it felt hard underfoot. There was no fridge. There was tinned meat and beer in a cool box. There were no shops around or bookshops and restaurants like in New York. Then the handsome boyfriend went back to work.
He said he didn't want to get married. I said I did. I needed to because I didn't have a visa to work in Germany. I wanted to marry and have children with him. That was my plan.
On the day I arrived in Germany, he came back from work very late. The next day, he went back to work and I went back to the airport to pick up some boxes I had sent from New York. It was tricky finding my way around that part of Frankfurt airport because I couldn't say much in German. But I managed, and I came back to his apartment with the boxes in a taxi. I was brave, but not brave enough.
A week after I arrived, he had a business trip for a few days in Berlin. I wanted to go with, but he thought it wasn't a good idea because he would be working very hard. So I stayed alone in Frankfurt in his apartment with the green sofa and hard floors, behind the train station. I stayed alone in a city where I didn't know anyone. And couldn't really speak the language. So I did what I usually do in those situations. I drank a lot of brandy and Coke. I wrote and I cried. The drunker I got, the more it hurt and the worse I wrote.
It was like that for three days.
Now when I think back to that scorched earth time, I wonder why I didn't gather myself, pack my stuff and take a taxi to the airport. I could have bought a ticket back to New York or to Cape Town. Why didn't I? I could have ended that pain. Why didn't I leave. Why did I think I had no options? I was the woman who had won awards and who had retrieved her boxes alone from Frankfurt airport. I wish I had been brave enough to have left then. I wish I had been imaginative enough to see a different future for myself. I imprisoned myself with a picture of the life I wanted at any cost. I stayed and I stayed. I wish I could tell that crying, drunk, lonely woman to get up, pack up and get a taxi back to the airport. I want to tell her she is worth more. I want to tell her that there is some shit that you don't have to take. But even now I don't know where to tell her to go once she gets to the airport because she is really can't go backwards, and there is no future yet. I see her scanning departure times for London, New York, Cape Town and not knowing where to go.
So I stayed, and I waited for him to come home. And he did. We got married and had three children. It took me another 26 years to figure out where to go and how to get there, but I finally did it. I live with my youngest daughter now, in a tiny house in London. I have a lovely job, kind friends and full bookshelves. I'm still working on the gym membership.
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