There is a subfolder in my WhatsApp inbox. It is called “Favorites”, but the chats that I’ve saved there aren’t my favorites. They’re witnesses of my failure to comply with the modern requirements of friendship. Some of the chats have been sitting in this folder for months, and whenever I see them there, I feel guilty, and it gets a little harder to answer these friends and acquaintances.

Then there’s Telegram. And Signal. And Instagram. And e-mail, and of course my regular phone. There’s the sports club where I train martial arts. The 12-step groups I attend. The colleagues that I want to catch up with. My siblings and cousins and aunts and uncles and my old grandmother who is developing dementia. There are the friends of my mom who I’d like to stay in touch with because after my mom’s passing it feels like my mom maybe gets to speak with me through them a little bit.

There’s work. All the clients that want to have a quick phone call to check in on the current status of their cases. The judges I need to call back. The other lawyers I collaborate with.

There is my boyfriend, of course. And his parents. They are the most amazing family and I enjoy every moment that I spend with them. Honestly. The same goes for my friends and my family and the work that I do, and the hobbies that I engage in, except for the occasional, completely normal and temporary moments of feeling annoyed by people. My life is incredibly rich. I am lucky to be a person with an unusually broad spectrum of interests, and I am lucky to be surrounded by so many loveable, loving, interesting, wonderful people that I want to be in touch with and that want to be in touch with me.

And yet on some days, I wish I never had to see any of them ever again. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I have sometimes thought: I wish they’d all go away. Sometimes, when friends told me that they were moving abroad or the friendship kind of fizzled out, I felt relieved. I am often happy when someone cancels a meeting we have arranged or fails to give me a call. Even though I hate nothing more than unreliability, I secretly wish you’d cancel our next coffee date. I have at times – and I can’t believe I’m actually saying this out loud – imagined that everyone I love would die and that finally I wouldn’t have to answer any messages or socialize anymore.

Of course, and I hope anyone who reads this and knows me personally understands this fully, I have never really wanted any of the people I love to die. This fantasy is the immediate result of a lifetime of feeling overwhelmed by the requirements of society. I was born overwhelmed by having to socialize. That hasn’t gotten better since we all got phones and messenger apps and social media. Instead, it’s gotten much, much worse.

When I was little, I used to have an existential crisis every time that I was invited to a birthday party. I just didn’t want to go. I didn’t know the venue. I didn’t know whether I was going to like the food. The other children were loud and often slightly violent – the way little children are before they become sufficiently socialized. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s honest and pure, in a very visceral way. I, however, didn’t want to be there. I wanted to stay home and play by myself. Usually, my mom declined the invitations for me, saying that I had a fever, while I was curled up in bed, crying my eyes out, because I felt like a bad friend. But I simply couldn’t do these events. Not for the life of me.

I still feel the same today. The only difference is that I no longer have a mom that will lie about me being too sick to show up. So I make myself go. I make myself call a friend, go for a coffee with my colleague or accompany my boyfriend to an event. Because I want to be there for and with the people I love. I want them to know that I care about them. Personally, I do not stop caring about someone I let into my heart just because I don’t share certain activities with them, and not even when I don’t see them for a number of years. Who enters my heart stays in my heart. But I know that in a mostly neurotypical world the importance of a relationship is often defined by the frequency with which contact is maintained. I feel the weight of this expectation on my shoulders every day.

I have always needed a lot of time to myself. My life revolved around hobbies and special interests for as long as I can remember. I often pick the people to have intense contact with based on the projects I am invested in at that specific moment. Maybe they stay as friends when my interest in that particular thing ceases to be so intense, maybe they don’t. Other friends are independent of my current passion, but socializing without an agenda has never been easy for me, to be honest. Maintaining lasting relationships feels like work – like having to brush your teeth every morning. You don’t do it because you feel like doing it, most of the time. Instead, you do it because you know it is important for your wellbeing.

I do enjoy the time that I spend with my friends, overall. However, I am not one of the people that recharges through socializing. No matter how much I love you, I will have to recover from the time I spend with you. That doesn’t mean I do not want to be around you. A lot of the time I wish I could spend more time around you – but it’s like eating your favorite meal: No matter how much you enjoy eating it, at some point your stomach is full and you need time to digest. That is how socializing works for me.

With our world getting faster by the minute, ever more communication channels open at the same time, and distance becoming increasingly irrelevant, I feel like I am caught in a never-ending relay race. I reach out to one person, knowing that I am already late in reaching out to another. Once one message is answered, another one pops up on my screen, waiting to be read or listened to. Instead of me getting to cross the finish line and rest, I immediately get handed another baton, and the race goes on.

I live with an ever-present bad conscience. My mind tells me that I’m always falling short. For many people, like me, being autistic comes with high standards, the tendency to translate options into rules, difficulty at prioritizing and a remarkable talent for beating ourselves up over small things. It doesn’t matter that the same people whose messages I leave unanswered for weeks maybe do the same when I reach out to them. It doesn’t matter that my friends are aware of my diagnosis and the resulting communication style. It doesn’t matter that they can always tell me when they think I fall short, and it doesn’t matter that they love me anyway.

As a result, I tend to do shitty trade-offs: I agree to join events or meet people for coffee when I don’t really have the energy. I cut my needed time alone short or engage less with my special interests than I’d like to, to convince myself that I’m still on top of things, and – if not a good friend, at least an acceptable one.

This trade-off doesn’t really benefit anybody. My friends will get an irritable, exhausted version of me that is only half-present. I will constantly run on battery-saver, and whenever I get home from a social encounter I will take refuge on my sofa, live on ice cream and caffeinated drinks instead of proper, nourishing food, sleep in instalments rather than getting the rest that I need, and indulge in video games, social media scrolling and mindless TV shows instead of dedicating my attention to the things that make me feel alive.

Therefore, I am trying more and more to ignore what feels like a one-sided relationship with my phone that I’ve never actively consented to. I let the messages sit in the inbox. I let calls go to mailbox and decline invitations. Over the last years, the physical symptoms that ensue from my neurodivergence have gotten so intense that I can no longer ignore them. Attending a birthday gathering that fills me with dread days before just to accommodate a friend is simply not worth dealing with hangover for the next three or four days, in most cases. There may be exceptions. But for the most part, I’ve understood that no one will take care of me if I don’t do it myself. And the expectation that I feel weighing on me every time I get a text message is entirely in my head – or created by a hovering non-being: Social media, the internet, the constant availability. I know we all feel it. Most of us feel stressed by the ever-growing demands of uninterrupted communication. I can see it in the scattered attention of the young, the ubiquitous diagnoses of burnout and depression, the insomnia, anxiety, and impression of always falling short. As an autistic, I might feel it more than many others. But I know it’s true for most of us.

The South Korean-born German philosopher Byung-Chul Han recently said something that really resonated with me: Nobody is forcing us anymore. We do it to ourselves. The exhaustion we feel these days is mostly self-imposed. We are free to opt out anytime.

And so I’ll try to opt out a little more often. I want to be free to gaze at the sky instead of gazing at another screen. When I tell my friends about my life (or listen to them telling me about theirs), I want to be fully present with them, not rush through a list of updates as if we were in a sprint meeting of some start-up. I want to be present for my life, generally, not observe it from a bird’s eye view, giving reports and evaluations of something that is passing me by.

So, if I don’t respond to your message immediately, or if I forget all about it, forgive me. I don’t love you any less. I simply need more immediacy in my life. You may expect a call from me some early Sunday morning, and then we’ll chat for three hours. Or I’ll be in your city and I’ll invite you to a concert and we’ll spend the most beautiful evening together. I will think of you between these encounters. I’ll hold you in my heart and I’ll listen to some of your voice messages (but maybe not all of them) and I’ll feel the love I have for you pulsating within me as I do so. When we talk, we’ll talk about real things – not about the schedule we’ve had over the last months, but the things that matter: life, death, love and God. And maybe then we’ll suddenly wonder: How did we even get to the point where we have forgotten that this is how it feels to be alive? That it’s not about frequency, not about “checking in” or “catching up”, but about being here: fully, entirely, together.

In my mid-twenties, I get into training martial arts. I start with Muay Thai and then venture into Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) after turning thirty. I fall in love with it. BJJ engages every part of me: It’s like playing chess with my body. It challenges me mentally and physically, and I really like the community. Apart from keeping me fit, it has become my social anchor. I even compete a few times. I’m not good at it, but I never expected to be. I’ve never been good at any sports, and the fact that I even got to a level where competing isn’t completely nuts is enough for me. I still experience a lot of physical pain, but apart from that, I feel less lost in my body. More at home. Martial arts are making me feel like this body actually belongs to me.

Then my mom dies after a long illness. I travel to India. One of my goals during this journey is to find a solution to my constant back pain. The years that I was my mother’s caregiver have left little space to tend to these things. Though BJJ has helped a lot with my confidence and proprioception, it definitely hasn’t helped with the chronic pain. But things get kind of blurry when you do martial arts. Everybody gets injured at some point and most of us train through the pain at least to a certain extent. Many martial artists don’t have a very healthy relationship with their bodies. We don’t take pain very seriously, unless it completely stops us from training - like a freshly torn ligament or a popped knee cap would. Not chronic pain though. We ignore that. And just like that, martial arts helps me to continue doing what I always did: Ignore what my body is telling me.

In India, I do a lot of yoga. I’m surprisingly “good” at it, though I strongly believe that yoga is not one of the things that should ever be used in a phrase like that. It’s not designed to be something that you’re good or bad at. That’s missing the whole point. However, let’s put it that way: My body easily bends into more complicated shapes. Also, everybody tells you to stretch when you’re hurting, don’t they? And so I stretch, and get massages, and meditate, and try to do a ten day Vipassana retreat where you sit and meditate for 14 hours straight, every day. My pain while sitting is excruciating. But that’s just another thing to get through, isn’t it?

The pain comes and goes. For a minute, during my yoga teacher training, it’s gone, only to come back twice as bad. For a week, I can hardly move. Then, after spending some weeks in an ashram, the pain is so bad that I almost despair. Every movement hurts. I feel like I’m in a body that belongs to an eighty year-old.

After nine months of traveling, I return to Berlin. One of the first things that I do is to return to BJJ. But somehow, I don’t really manage to get back into my old routine. Within just a few weeks, this happens: One morning, I wake up, and my body hurts more than ever before. I feel like the vertebrae of my upper spine are fused together, like I’m carrying a solid metal bar in my back instead of a spine. There is a pain in my left shoulder that flares up every day a few hours after getting up. It only decreases when I lay down and pop up my arm on cushions. At night I cannot sleep and I toss and turn in bed in an attempt to find a pain-free position. This is unbearable. I cannot work out anymore. While usually my pain flares only last a few days, this drags on forever, the pain in the shoulder becoming sharper every day. I order a ruff from Amazon because my head feels to heavy for my neck. And I decide to give the orthopedist one final try.

I’ve gotten diagnosed with autism and ADHD a few months before my mom died. I was thirty-three. Everyone always knew I was a bit different. There have been multiple attempts at explaining my awkwardness: From being found to be gifted as a child in elementary school over effects of childhood trauma, growing up in an alcoholic family and some therapists suspicion I might have borderline personality disorder. Finally, at 33, the diagnosis fits. I intuitively know that this time, I’ve gotten to the core of it all. As I get more acquainted with the diagnosis, I learn that there are a number of physical comorbidities that are often found in individuals with autism.

The orthopedist I decided to see is specializing in one of these conditions: Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, specifically the hypermobile form.

Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (hEDS) is a hereditary connective tissue disorder in which the body’s collagen is less resilient than normal. Because connective tissue supports joints, skin, blood vessels, and many internal organs, hEDS can affect multiple body systems.

The most common features are generalized joint hypermobility, joint instability and pain, frequent sprains or dislocations, muscle fatigue, and soft or mildly stretchy skin.

The doctor assesses me. My Beighton-score – a way to measure if someone is hypermobile – is seven out of nine. Clearly hypermobile. I tell the doctor about my other symptoms: The difficulty to find a good sleeping position, the pain and stiffness in the morning, the aching joints, the scoliosis, the tension in jaw, shoulders and neck, the degenerations in my spine, the difficulty with knowing where I am in space, my clumsiness, the weakness as a child, the constant pain that varies from day to day and nothing really seems to solve, but that on some days is hardly present just to knock me off my feet the next day, seemingly out of nowhere. He nods. He’s heard all that before. It fits.

He sends me to a geneticist. As an orthopedist, he cannot give me the definitive diagnosis as hEDS is a diagnosis that is reached through exclusion.

“I’m very sure you’ll get the diagnosis”, he says, and prescribes me with months of physiotherapy until I finally can see a geneticist in October, six months away. He also puts me in an online group for people with the same syndrome. “You should take a lot of supplements”, he adds, and recommends a few books I should read. “And get checked for POTS.”

“Do you know of anyone with this diagnosis that does martial arts?”, I ask. He shakes his head. “Contact sports isn’t recommended with this condition. The impact is too high. But generally you can do whatever you want as long as you feel good.”

The problem is, I don’t feel good. Not at all. I stop going to BJJ. There’s been a fallout with my trainer for other reasons, and I don’t feel supported by the association considering my current condition. Instead, I go to physiotherapy, and I lose all trust in my body. The physiotherapist is a blessing, though. She specializes in treating people with hEDS and within a few weeks the gnawing pain in my shoulder and the numbness that had spread through my entire left hand is gone. She shows me exercises to strengthen the muscles that are typically weaker in people with hEDS and puts me through some tests. One includes lying on my back, tucking my chin slightly, and lifting my head a few centimeters from the ground. Apparently, “normal” people can easily hold this for over thirty seconds, while I’m trembling and falling out of position after a mere 17. The picture is getting clearer.

I see another doctor to get checked for POTS. I’ve always felt tired a lot, easily sweating and then cooling off so much that I had to wrap myself in a blanket while everyone else was in t-shirts. Yes, I know that I’ve felt dizzy a lot, and nauseous, and that as a teenager I blacked out easily. Still, I’m surprised when the doctor ends the test a little bit before the usual time. “No need to do any further measurements”, she says, and takes the blood pressure cuff off my arm. “It’s very clear.”

She diagnoses me with POTS. Postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. It’s a disorder of the autonomic nervous system in which the heart rate increases abnormally upon standing. POTS leads to symptoms such as dizziness, lightheadedness, fatigue, palpitations, exercise intolerance, and sometimes fainting. In people with hEDS, more elastic connective tissue may allow blood vessels to stretch excessively, causing blood to pool in the legs and abdomen when standing. This can reduce blood return to the heart, prompting the heart to beat faster to maintain blood flow to the brain.

When we end the test which basically consists in standing up for ten minutes after lying down long enough for the heart rate to settle, my feet and hands are purple and ice-cold. The doctor prescribes me with Ivabradin, a heart medication that helps to prevent an excessive increase in the heart rate. I get a tracker that shows me how many times a day my heart rate spikes after simply getting up. Each time I shower the tracker logs a cardio session.

The next months I experience some of the worst pain flares I’ve ever had. I also feel nauseous and dizzy almost every day. Sometimes I have to sit down on the floor at random times. I feel weak. And I am very fucking frustrated. Sometimes I get really angry. How come I’ve had these symptoms for my entire life and all I was ever told was: Everybody feels this way? Because no. Not everybody does. In fact, only around 0,01 to 0,06 % of humans do.

However frustrated I feel, this is also a revelation. Finally, FINALLY, I know what’s up with me. That means that I can start treating my condition. My physiotherapist recommends specific exercises. I start taking some supplements and get my blood work done to see whether there is anything that I could do to support my body more. I wish I could say that I take my supplements regularly, but at least begin to eat three meals a day.

And something else happens: I start to forgive myself. To forgive this body that I hated with such an intensity that I tried to starve it to death when I was fifteen. That I cut with razor blades and filled with substances just so I didn’t have to feel it as much. I not only start to forgive this body. I start to really appreciate it.

Because, come to think of it – the fact that I am able to do so many things, the fact that I am so strong and did get to a point where I was even able to compete in martial arts with my adversaries being healthy, fully able-bodied women – that is amazing. Because my body is disabled. And very resilient.

I file for a disability card. I sit with my frustration and at times I miss BJJ so much that I cry. I get up in the morning, pain shooting through my joints, and I get scared: What if this is how things are going to be from now on? What if it gets worse? Some people with EDS and POTS end up having to use wheel chairs and walking canes. Some are in constant pain. It’s easy to catastrophize. For a while, I feel very low, almost depressed. I don’t even try to work out anymore. I’m too scared to break something, or to wake up again and lose all my progress to another flare.

And then, somehow, it all settles. I start to look at my body with new eyes. I remember that none of us know what the future holds and that nothing is black or white. One beautiful summer day, I take a cab to the open air swimming pool. I take the cab because the idea of having to walk or bike there is too off-putting. So I trick myself into going by making the requirements as doable as possible. I put on my swimwear, and once my body pierces the surface of the cold water, I know that this has been a good idea. I swim. Like I did when I was little and my mom was hoping that by swimming regularly I could avoid spine surgery.

I swim less than half of the lanes that I used to when in better training. But instead of beating myself up about it, I’m proud. I did it. I made it back into movement, back into my body. Two days later, I go swimming again, a little further than the first time.

I’m learning something that I wasn’t able to do until now: Pacing. I’ve always treated my body as something that owes me. Something that needs to deliver. I’ve never looked at it like a living being, more even: The living, breathing being that carries my soul. I always wanted to wring achievements out of it. Now, for the first time, I ask myself: What does this body need? How can we find a common ground? Make peace? Become friends even?

Having to quit training BJJ has caused a crack in my identity. Not because I’ve been particularly good. I wasn’t. After three years of training, I am still a white belt (for a number of reasons, to be fair). The point is that I defined myself through sports. Through achievements. Busyness. At the same time, since I was my mom’s caregiver, I have learned to let go more and more. Giving up BJJ for the time being was another process of letting go. I am no longer the person that works out five times a week, regularly.

Maybe I’ll be that person again. Maybe not. Maybe I’ll work out five times a week for some months and then get immobilized by a pain flare for a bit. I don’t know. And I don’t have to know.

The older I get, the more I appreciate those cracks in my identity. Because honestly: Having an identity is so tedious. It’s exhausting. You need to polish it and construct it and adorn it and it is just a process that involves so much ego. The more I let go, the more I grow into something that feels like my actual purpose, and less like something that I want to display. In twelve step programs we say: “Just do the next right thing.”

For years I wondered: But how do I know what the next right thing is? I started overthinking it like I overthink everything. But little by little, the next right thing has emerged out of the confusion and become clear. Not like a manual. That’s still too complicated. But like a guiding light. Or a warm breeze when you’re cold. It’s just – there. It’s like I’m swinging from bar to bar, and there is only ever one bar in my reach. One step at a time. It’s simple.

I’ll go back to BJJ this week. For the first time in about six months. I won’t compete again. I won’t be able to do take-downs or intense sparring. I don’t know if I’ll still enjoy it if I can’t do it with the same ambition as before. I am happy to give it a try, though. And if it doesn’t work for me, then something else will. And if that doesn’t work anymore, then yet something else will. Things change all the time. We’re all damaged in some ways, but not broken. Nothing was ever perfect and it is beautiful as it is. I’m open to explore this relationship with my body, to listen to it, and have my soul cracked wide open, as layer after layer of alleged identity is removed.

Because I know that we are so much more than that. Beyond all that make believe that we ourselves buy into, there is a deep clarity. Beyond that lie love, and life, and truth. Sometimes I forget. But now I remembered: That’s where I’m headed.

More About "A Life That Works"

I remember being five years old. I’m lying belly-down on my mom’s mattress, half of my body hanging over the edge of the bed. My mom is sitting on my thighs and urging me to keep going: Up and down with my torso, up and down, to strengthen the muscles in my lower back. I fucking hate it. I don’t want to do physiotherapy anymore. I’ve been doing it every day since I was two years old and today I really don’t feel like it. I stop moving. My mom yells at me. I let myself go limp and dangle over the bed, inspecting the floor as if there was anything interesting to see. Suddenly, I plunge forward. My face hits the bed frame and a sharp pain jolts through my mouth. I cry out and then my mom is there, picks me up from the floor and examines my face. She forces my mouth open and when she retrieves her fingers from my oral cavity, the tips have turned blood-red. “I’m so sorry, love”, she says, again and again, and now we’re both crying. I’m in pain and shock, and she is overcome by guilt. “I didn’t mean to”, she whimpers, and I know she didn’t. She probably didn’t think that the weight of my upper body would make me jolt forward if she let go of my legs. She makes a phone call while I am laying on the mattress – this time on my back, face up, trying to still the blood-flow from my mouth. It’s a lot of blood. Mucous membrane tends to bleed heavily. After the visit to the dentist I know that I get to keep the tooth. But it turns greyish soon after. It’s dead, they say. The pulp – the dental nerve – was severed by the impact. It’s just a milk tooth, though. We just wait until it falls out by itself.

I’m six. After school, I’m invited to my friend’s birthday party. She’s turning seven and I am envious that she’s now older than me. She has invited a number of kids from school and it’s very noisy. I don’t like birthday parties, except for my own. The kids are running about, screaming, bounding up the play structure and surrounding trees, letting themselves hang from branches and jumping back down onto the grass. “Coward”, one of the kids shouts at me. I pull myself together, get a move on, and make a clumsy attempt at climbing the tree myself. I really want to, I do. But as soon as my feet leave the ground, I don’t know where to put them. I’m unable to tell the distance to the branches over my head. The world is spinning and I feel dizzy. I don’t know where I am in space. I shrug and pretend that I don’t want to join the other kids on the tree-top, anyway. Instead, I hop back onto the ground and crouch next to a thick patch of grass, examining every little blade with utmost scrutiny. I’m really good at finding four-leaf clovers because I can spend hours looking for tiny details.

I’m seven. My mom is taking me to a psychologist. She thinks there is something not quite right with me. I get sick in the car on the way there and my mom has to pull over and throw open the door before I vomit all over the seat. We arrive late to the appointment and I’ll have to do whatever examination awaits me in two parts because we don’t have enough time due to the vomit incident. At the psychologist, they make me interpret patches of colors and draw my family as animals. I draw three cats: My mother, my father and me – even though I haven’t seen my father in almost four years. He’s an alcoholic. When the psychologist asks me why I drew my family as cats, I answer: Because that’s the animal that I draw best. The psychologist makes as face as if I’d just ruined her favorite trick. After the second appointment, my mom gets called in to speak with the psychologist. She’s getting my results. “And?”, I ask her as we sit in the car again? “What do I have?” “Nothing, really”, my Mom says. “You’re just very smart.” I’m happy to hear that, but I know it’s not the whole truth.

Buy me a coffee?

I’m eight. And I’m dreading the appointment that I have today. Once a year, my mother and I drive to the university clinic in Düsseldorf where we see a specialized orthopedist. For over six years now, he’s been assessing my progress. Last time, he wasn’t too happy with me. “We’ll give it another year”, he said, and recommended I train as hard as possible. My mom put me in competitive swimming classes after that. I go three times a week, and it’s the only sport I don’t hate, though I don’t like it very much either. I lose all my competitions, always coming out as the slowest, no matter how hard I try. But I attend classes without complaining, because if I don’t train, I will have to have surgery. On the spine. If I don’t train, they will cut me open, a cut the length of my arm, and put magnetic rods between my vertebrae. Or, if not the surgery, they’ll have to put me in a corset and I’ll be caged in like a turtle, unable to bend or move a lot at all. While we wait for the doctor to call us in, anxiety stifles my breath almost as if I was already wearing one of these metal shells. Finally, my name is called. In his office, the doctor examines me and nods. “Got a lot better since last year”, he says. I don’t allow myself to feel relief just yet. Not until I know what “better” means. No surgery better? No corset better? Or just undefined better? “If it gets a little better yet until next year, we’ll be able to proceed without any further interventions”, he says. The day after, back in my swimming classes, I swim as if there was no tomorrow.

I’m twelve. This semester we’re doing dancing during physical education. The girls in my class at the all-girls school that I attend have voted for that. I wanted to vote for swimming, but that is scheduled for next semester and wasn’t even on the list. I hate dancing. I always get confused with left and right, like that time when I was four and my mom had put me in a group of oriental dance for kids. We did a presentation for which we had to walk in a circle. I cringe as I remember the video that my mom took of me: all the other kids walk in one direction, and I stop, make a few steps in the other direction and then try to find my way back into the group, looking hopelessly lost. Only now it’s worse than when I was four. Now, everybody wants to be cool. The girls wear tight leggings and loose neon-colored shirts, and they tie their hair in high ponytails, and they laugh at everyone who doesn’t do the same. When we practice our choreography, I stay in the back of the hall, trying to draw as little attention as possible to myself, while I marvel at how some girls move so effortlessly, apparently feeling completely at home in their bodies. At least I’m not overweight, I think. That saves me most of their spite. I look at Maria who clearly has tried to hide her curvy shape under the loose sweater she’s wearing. No matter how much she tries to hide, she isn’t spared a single hurtful comment. She gets elected for the teams we form during ball games even after me, even though she’s much better at sports. At least I’m not her, I think with a stab of guilt.

I’m fifteen. Within three months, I have lost twelve kilos. This morning, I reached forty-four. It’s a good number, I think. Not as good as forty-three though. By now, I’m so thin that my trousers in size XS are slipping from my hips. My cheekbones look like they’re about to pierce the skin in my face, and today someone I know gave a shocked little shriek when they saw me again after two weeks. The look on their face was like a gift to me. I am absolutely determined to control this body that I’m in. And if it means I’ll have to destroy it. Maybe that is in fact what I want. Because it doesn’t serve me. It doesn’t obey me. How can my brain be so very efficient, and my body so flawed? I’m so sick of my fragile health, of always being the one that fights a cold over weeks. I lost count of the times that I had pneumonia as a kid, and all the antibiotics I took. I want to be strong. Perfect, even. Or not exist at all. Later, in class, I briefly lose consciousness. I haven’t eaten properly in weeks and feel like I’m wrapped in cotton. One of my classmates notices and urges me to go to the school nurse. I reluctantly agree. “Your pressure is 70 to 30”, the nurse says as she removes the cuff from my upper arm. “You could be dead.” “But I’m not”, I say, feeling elated, as I let my feet dangle from the examination table, sitting upright. I’m not dead. I proved to myself that I’m not that fragile. Take that, body.

Buy me a coffee?

I’m sixteen. “Make sure you don’t drop the ball on your feet, Daniela,” my sports teacher shouts at me. I can hear the disdain in his voice. I clench my teeth and murmur: “It’s Theresa, not Daniela.” I hate him. I hate PE. And I hate this dumb metal ball that I’m supposed to somehow catapult through the hall. Who even came up with this nonsensical activity? I just can’t seem to get it right. Each time I try, the ball drops down to the floor about a meter away from me. For whatever reason, I don’t know how to access and control the muscles responsible for the push that I’m supposed to execute, those muscles that I finally started to fuel with food again. Around me, some of my classmates are snickering. I know that a few of them enjoy watching me fail at something. I joined their year a couple of months back after skipping the eleventh grade. Still, I’m top of the class. Even though I always try to downplay my grades, it seems to satisfy something deeply human to see another person struggle when things usually come easily to them. If they only knew how many things don’t come easily to me.

I’m seventeen. With horror, I look at my fingers that have turned chalk-white. They look like they belong to a corpse. I pinch my right index finger with my left hand. There’s still feeling in it, at least. But my hands are cold and sweaty, as if they didn’t belong to the rest of my body. From white, they turn to purple. Once I reach home, I hold them under lukewarm water and almost jerk back as unbearable pain shoots through my hands. Now they’re tingling and crimson-red, as if I had let them sit on a sunny beach by themselves, while all my other body parts remained in late German autumn. I notice that it’s happening with my feet as well. Sometimes they turn bluish when I stand. In summer, I stop wearing sandals. And shorts, because the skin on my legs is mottled, with blue veins shining through and red patches around the knees that make them seem chubby and swollen. One day, my mom notices my fingers. For a moment, she looks worried, but then we somehow drop the topic. But in me, something changes. Suddenly, I’m afraid that there is something really wrong with me. What if it is something serious? What if I’m dying? The thought doesn’t leave me for years.

I’m eighteen. I’m sitting in front of a rheumatologist. About two years ago, my finger joints started cracking. My neck followed. Then my wrists, my entire spine, and eventually all of my toes. If I don’t intentionally crack my joints regularly, I feel stiff and immobile. A couple of months earlier, I started having pain in my limbs, too. It feels like the ache you experience when you get a fever. But not quite. It’s meandering through my body without me being able to pinpoint its exact place of origin. The doctor checks off my symptoms and then sends me to get my blood work done. A few days later, I have the results. No rheumatism. Good, I think. But then, what is it? I’ve started to see a therapist again after I was diagnosed with Hashimoto, an autoimmune disease of the thyroid. In therapy, I speak a lot about the feeling that something isn’t quite right with me. I struggle so much, socially, emotionally and physically. On the other hand, things that most other people seem to struggle with are ridiculously easy for me. I feel like there’s a frosted glass screen between me and the world, or as if I was constantly floating a few centimeters above the ground, like a ghost.

More About "A Life That Works"

I’m nineteen. I started university a while ago. Studying law doesn’t excite me as much as I had expected, and though I hoped that university would be a new start, it turns out that the kids that go to university are the same kids that attended school before. I have long since stopped going to lectures and spend most of my time reading books at home or exercising. If I can exercise. Lately, I’ve been feeling unwell all the time, as if I was coming down with a cold that never really emerges. I’ve had a sore throat for a few days, but it has disappeared already. Since then, I’ve been having a low-grade fever every day, though only for about thirty minutes, starting whenever I climb the stairs to my flat or vacuum-clean my room. I can feel my temperature rising as I break into a sweat, tear my jumper off and lie on my bed, panting, checking the exact number on a thermometer. I become obsessed with the thermometer. My temperature regularly rises up to 37.7 – not technically a fever, but also not entirely normal – and within thirty to sixty minutes it goes back down to 36.9. At first, I thought this must be an aftereffect of the cold, but it’s been weeks since then. I’m starting to worry. I google. And I learn that a low-grade fever over weeks often is an early sign of certain types of cancer. A wave of panic washes over me. The next day, I go to see my general physician. She takes blood samples and holds a stethoscope to my heart. “There is a little sound that I’d like to examine further”, she says, and I’m immediately alarmed. “What does that mean?”, I ask. “Could be a sign of myocarditis”, she says, and patiently answers all my questions. On my way home, I walk slowly, feeling like I was walking on thin ice that could break any moment and pull me into the deadly waters underneath. The doctor calls me the next day to say that all my blood work is normal. All-clear. The mysterious low-grade fever returns regularly from then on, whenever I’m recovering from a cold or under a lot of pressure.

I’m twenty-one. I live in Berlin with my boyfriend now. My mom calls me and tells me that she has cancer. We don’t know if she’ll survive. My health anxiety intensifies. By now, everybody knows that I’m a hypochondriac. My boyfriend is often annoyed with me because I obsessively google symptoms, trying to find an explanation for what I’m experiencing: The nausea, the constant exhaustion, the sudden faintness after getting up. I’m also in pain a lot of the time. My jaw is tight like a vise, and my shoulders and neck muscles constantly hurt. The only thing that brings me temporary relief is working out. Through sports – five times a week – I keep my eating disorder in check and make the constant tension in my body bearable. If I am able to train, that is. Because something seems to be going on with my body most of the time. A cystitis. A cold that doesn’t go away. The low-grade fever returning. My health anxiety jumps from one symptom to another. Something isn’t right, I’m convinced. No doctor ever finds anything. Family and friends roll their eyes at me whenever I come up with something new. Some days, I know that I’m probably being irrational. For example, when I discover two tiny lumps in my groin that I’ve never felt before, and my brain immediately goes to ovarian cancer. That is what my mom has, anyway. Of course those lumps are lymph nodes, and they’re perfectly fine as they are. Other times, I’m not that sure. Why does my vision often go blurry? What is that stinging pain behind my left eye? And why does my heart sometimes skip a beat?

I’m twenty-two. My mom has made it through chemo and is cancer-free. I’m in the middle of the preparations for my first state bar exam. My weeks are spent in the library where I crouch over books trying to remember all that I need to know for this most merciless of all exams. I’m constantly scared. I’ve had an MRI of the brain a few months ago because the fainting spells didn’t stop, and my vision got blurry more and more often. Also, my fingers had started tingling from time to time. The findings have been ambiguous: There were some lesions in my brain that are probably nothing. But they could be a symptom of an atypical form of multiple sclerosis. I need to go check again in a few weeks. If the MRI hasn’t changed, the findings are irrelevant. The second scan doesn’t show any changes. For a few days, I’m relieved, until I start having a ringing in my left ear. The tinnitus is subtle, but constant. The otorhinolaryngologist confirms that everything is alright with my hearing, but have I ever considered multiple sclerosis as an explanation? I head right back to my neurologist, and convince her to perform a lumbar puncture on me: a medical procedure in which a thin, long needle is inserted between two vertebrae in the lower back to extract spinal fluid. The doctor is reluctant at first, saying that with my last MRI results, multiple sclerosis is almost certainly excluded. I don’t know what almost certainly means. It’s an oxymoron. Anyway, I want certainty, because all I know is that it is not normal to see the letters smudging before your eyes whenever you try to read a book. Finally, the doctor gives in. I feel my blood pressure plummet when the doctor retracts the needle from my spine, but I don’t pass out. A few days later – my back is still hurting from the procedure – the results come back. I don’t have multiple sclerosis. I’m relieved, of course. But part of me also wishes they had found something that could explain what is wrong with me.

The symptoms continue. Eventually, after an odyssey of several years, I arrive back where I started my health journey: At the orthopedist. I’ve been here before, some months back, and the doctor had briefly looked at what is left of my scoliosis and checked the mobility of my neck. He had prescribed massages and fango therapy for the pain. This time, the doctor takes me more seriously. I’m going for another MRI, this time of the cervical spine. I’m twenty-three when the scan shows multiple small cervical disc herniations and early signs of degeneration in my neck. The report reads like something belonging to a much older body, but the doctor doesn’t bother with further questions or explanations. I go home feeling relieved. I wanted them to find something. I can do physiotherapy, they say, and for a while, I do. It doesn’t really change anything, though. But that doesn’t matter anyway. What matters is that there is nothing really wrong with me. I can attribute most of my symptoms to the spine degeneration. By now, I have gotten used to being in constant pain. I have also internalized that how I perceive my body is wrong: All the symptoms that I experience don’t seem to be abnormal. Otherwise, someone would find something more apt to explain how it is all connected. By now, I mainly go with what others say about me: I’m a hypochondriac. This is backed up by how others react when I tell them about my symptoms: “Well, sitting around all day just isn’t healthy. You should do yoga.” I mention that I work out five times a week, and have done so for years, but eventually, the message is always the same: Everyone has back pain. We all feel dizzy sometimes. Have you tried changing your cushion? You are too sensitive. Stop concentrating so much on how you feel. Pull yourself together. And I do. I pull myself together and learn not to listen to my body, not to take my needs seriously. By now, I’m sure everybody feels this way. I just handle it worse than most.

This blog started out as “The Year After My Mom Died”. Here, I wrote one article per day while I was traveling India, Nepal and Sri Lanka for nine months. I had just lost my mother whose caregiver I had been from age 28 to 33 when she died of early-onset Alzheimer’s and ovarian cancer.

I took time to heal. I meditated, did yoga and cried a lot. I made friends and felt the heaviness of the last years fall off my shoulders. I shed my skin. I learned to laugh again and recovered from burnout.

It’s now been 15 months since my mom passed. I will always miss her, and I will always love her. But my life no longer revolves around her care and illness, nor around my grief over losing her.

I don’t think we move on from loss. You can’t leave behind a relationship this meaningful. But we integrate loss, and that is what I have done. On some days I’ll still write about it. It will no longer be at the core of my writing, though. My mom would have wanted me to go out there and live my life, and I always knew that this is what I was going to do. It was what I was doing all along anyway.

During the nine months of traveling, I came to terms with a couple of things. In late 2024, I got diagnosed with autism and ADHD at age thirty-three. I always knew I was different. I found many names for it: Giftedness, which was diagnosed when I was a little kid. Trauma. For a while I thought it was borderline. Addiction. Being an adult child of an alcoholic. They all fit somehow, but they didn’t nail it. Autism and ADHD do. God, do they nail it.

I understood that my life needed to change. I’m in my mid-thirties. After a lifetime of masking, my energy has started to wane. I can no longer keep up the show: Constantly masking my neurodivergent traits. It’s not a conscious action. It’s a learned behavior that saved my ass as a kid. And at some point, it started to destroy me.

Since then, I have been focusing on building a life that works for me. Having a diagnosis is one thing: It gives me the words to describe what is going on. But I am not interested in simply describing misery. I was never content with the status quo. Today, I understand that I deserve a life that makes me happy. A life that I love. A life that exceeds my wildest dreams.

I have started to create this life.

I am not religious, but twelve step programs have taught me humility. I use the word God for an underlying force that works in everything and that is far beyond my understanding. Through God’s grace, I have been given the answers I needed and the energy to wake up everyday and ask myself: How do I want to live? What do I need? How can I best be of service?

Being of service doesn’t mean masking your needs and adapting yourself to a world that isn’t made for you. It means finding your own path and inspiring others. Creating ways for people to identify. Speaking your truth and shining your authentic light on things.

That is what this blog will now be about.

I started self-employment when I returned from my travels: As a lawyer, a coach for other neurodivergent people with my mentorship program “A Life That Works For You” and as a freelance writer. I don’t know how to do things right. I’m improvising every day, learning, looking at my mistakes, embracing them, laughing, loving every part of it.

I doubt myself. I analyze stuff that goes wrong and look at my part in it to see how it can be improved. I cut myself some slack when I fuck up. I need my friends to remind me that I deserve this slack. On some days, I’m utterly lost. On other days, I think I have it all figured out and that is usually when life lovingly slaps me in the face to keep me from getting arrogant.

I’m living between Italy and Germany. I’m learning how to live in an intimate relationship and navigate my emotions. I’m experimenting with ADHD medication. I’m in the process of getting diagnosed with EDS and possibly POTS. Every day, I study neurodivergence. I’m sober, and I plan to be for the rest of my life. Currently, I’m ending some important relationships in my life to make space for new things.

I don’t know how to do all this. But I know one thing: It is getting better every day. And that is what this blog will be about: The wild, messy, beautiful journey towards myself.

Because only through knowing myself, I can know you. Only through loving myself, I can love you. And if there is one thing that I am completely sure of, among all my not-knowing, it is that love is the one and only purpose of our existence.

Come with me on this journey. Share your thoughts, your criticism, your courage. I hope that for some of you my words may be inspiring, empowering. I invite you to share these pages with me as I learn to live with an open heart and an open mind, fully human and authentically myself.

15 months after you died I wake up one morning in tears,

After reading a poem that Megan Falley wrote about loving her deceased partner,

Crying as if the pain was brand new.

Last weekend I went back to my hometown for the first time in four years.

For the first time you weren’t there to pull me into a hug,

To tell me how happy you were to see me,

And I, for the first time, wasn’t counting the hours until I could hop on a train back to Berlin.

Grieving you is messy.

I do not miss seeing you fade away, bedridden in your last months,

Your mind lost somewhere in an Alzheimer’s fog way beyond my reach.

I do not miss driving you to chemo and feeling my own life slip away

While the piles of forms to fill and the number of calls to make chew up my days.

I also don’t miss the way I always felt when I visited, like I needed to hide a part of myself, disoriented and like there was something not quite right with me.

But then, there’s so much that I miss, too.

Since you’ve been gone the past has become so big, you know.

It’s the only place where you still exist,

Where I can still touch you and make sense of it all.

There’s so much that I want to tell you.

For example: I fell in love. I fell in love and I can’t tell you and that part really sucks.

But fuck it. I’m going to tell you anyway.

You’d really like him. He’s the kind of guy you always wanted for me:

Grounded, stable, loving. He’s also intelligent and fun but not in an eccentric way

Like the men I used to choose. And he tells me every day that absolutely everything

About me is right and lovable. I’m starting to believe it, for the first time.

I’m self-employed now. I know, you always told me not to do that.

You told me it was horrible. And I believe you. For you it was.

For me it turns out to be just right.

I also found out that I’m disabled. Always have been, in fact, and that explains so much.

I wish I could have told you earlier.

Remember the time when you couldn’t get up anymore,

Around four months before you died, and on most days you wouldn’t even react

When I came to see you?

One day I sat next to your bed, held your hand and told you:

“Mom, I got diagnosed with autism.”

And like a dolphin from somewhere deep down in the ocean depths

You came up to the surface, and you took all that you had, and you formed a full sentence.

I hadn’t heard you speak that much in weeks.

“You’re autistic”, you repeated. “Well, isn’t that something.”

I could see worry written over your face, but also understanding.

I wanted nothing more than to let you know that you did so well, raising me all by yourself, without even knowing,

while other women call themselves autism-moms and make it their whole identity, you just loved me,

and did the best you could, with all your flaws and the things that didn’t go well.

You still always did the best you could and I love you for that.

I never heard you speak that much again.

Now, I’m learning that autism isn’t the whole picture.

I have a physical disability, too, and ADHD of course.

Remember how my hands were always so cold and my fingers would turn white like those of a corpse?

Remember how every day, since I was two years old, you obliged me to do physiotherapy for my scoliosis, hoping that I would be able to live a pain-free life?

Remember all the visits to the university clinic, how I almost needed spine surgery, but you made sure I trained and I swam and you never cut me any slack,

And while I hated that as a child, I am so grateful today.

I still live with chronic pain, but I’m sure you saved me a great deal of it.

It’s all connected, Mom. The ways I used to fall out of contact, the way I withdrew, my quick learning abilities and my stinging logic that drove you so mad at times, my chronic pain and my shitty sleep, and the many times I got sick as a child. It has a name.

Your friends from thirty years ago acknowledge that too now.

You had to put up with so much criticism for how you were raising me, while you just knew what mothers know,

And you did the right thing to keep me safe, as safe as you could.

Finally, it all makes sense, and your old friends see it too.

They tell me anecdotes of all the things that were different with me, and while I often wonder how it could take so long to find the right name for it, you knew all along, name or not, and you acted accordingly.

Trusting my gut feeling, that is something I have learned from you. And doing what I deem right even when others question it.

But I don’t want to talk only about myself.

I wish we could speak about how your brain was wired a bit differently, too.

Why you were always so stressed by small things, overwhelmed by daily tasks, why our place was filled with small piles of stuff everywhere and you almost burned the house down a couple of times.

I wish I could tell you that there was nothing wrong with you, just as there is nothing wrong with me.

That your abilities just were a bit different, and that your energy levels fluctuated for reasons.

I wish we could’ve worked out like maniacs together to get rid of all that surplus energy, and I wish we could’ve grown into a kind of forgiveness towards ourselves, for being the way we are. Side by side.

I wish I could have seen you coming to understand yourself and finally love yourself for the beautiful, bright soul that you were. I wanted to see you grow old like that.

I wanted to fight with you over returning patterns and suddenly realize why we were doing that dance with each other.

I wanted to build a messy, beautiful adult relationship with you,

Where we both were allowed to be just as we are.

As messy and beautiful as grieving you.

I promise I’ll do all this for myself.

I’ll thrive and embrace my disabled and totally right self, and I’ll love life double because you can’t anymore.

And one day, I’ll tell you about all of it in person.

I.
I’m 34 years old. Ever since I can remember, my mind has been racing. There is no exact number for thoughts per minute in the average person, but I was always sure that I would outperform whatever the average might be.
There is a constant background chatter in my mind. Mostly, it consists of relatively coherent speech, like a commentator that lives in my brain’s folds and just won’t shut up. My days have always been long and exhausting.
In fact, I usually wake up feeling exhausted already. That is because I don’t have a very deep sleep. I can count the nights that I’ve slept eight hours without waking up on one hand. Either I struggle with falling asleep, or with staying asleep. It’s mostly the latter. I’m plagued by nightmares. Little sounds will tear me from my dreams, and often enough I’m grateful for it.
My dreams are like watching a TV series. One chapter follows another. Sometimes, on the weekend, I try to sleep in and entertain myself with my dreams. This comes at a price, though. The more I engage in binge-watching of the nightly products of my brain, the more I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck the next morning.
I have trouble sticking to routines. I desperately need them, but after a week or so, doing the same thing over and over again feels like a good reason to jump out the window of my third-floor apartment.
I have developed tools to deal with the chatter in my mind.
Mostly, when I get up from the sofa, let’s say, to get a glass of water from the kitchen, by the time I reach the kitchen I have no idea why I’m there. So, I repeat in my mind: Water, water, water.
My attention may still get caught by something else, like the trash, and while I decide to take out the trash I empty a plate with some food scraps on it and start washing the plate, and washing the plate reminds me that I should also wash my dirty laundry, and I go to the bedroom and collect the laundry from the laundry basket, and I start making my bed, and think that it would be a good time to change the sheets, and then I realize there is a hole in the bed sheet and I open Amazon to order a new bed sheet, and then I remember that I wanted to reply to an email from a colleague, and when I open my inbox there is a new message from a job I applied for, and two hours later I still haven’t had my water. I’m dehydrated, my head hurts, my hands are sweaty and cold, and the chatter still hasn’t died down.
You wouldn’t think it’s like that when you see me. I seem pretty put together. Because after all, I do empty the trash and wash the dishes and make the bed and wash the laundry and answer the emails. I have coping mechanisms for all that. Lists, mostly. An infinite number of lists on my phone (many of which I have forgotten exist, so I listed the to-dos in other lists again), a big whiteboard in my bedroom, and a baseline of anxiety that is so strong that I get everything done that I would otherwise forget.
But it is so tiring, believe me. I always feel out of breath. It’s like I’ve inhaled once when I was born, and since then I’m trying to ration the air in my lungs. I live on caffeine, and for many years I paired it with cigarettes and the occasional stimulants that seemed to quiet my mind, plus alcohol to numb the intensity of noises and bright lights, the horror of social interactions and the world in general.
I remember the first and only time that I took Ritalin, at the age of eighteen. It felt like I had entered a Tetris game in real life. My thoughts came in an orderly sequence, instead of stumbling over each other, tripping, falling, and leaving me desperately out of energy by noon. I felt a calm I had never sensed before. I chased that calm in my twenties, abusing alcohol and other recreational drugs.
What always kept me going, what helped me to complete my studies with honours and follow them up with a PhD, was my constant sense of impending doom. I felt like I was the glue holding the world together. If I allowed myself one misstep, just one moment of inattention, everything was going to fall apart.
When my mom fell sick and I became her caregiver, I had a burnout. I don’t think it was my first one. I believe it was the first one that I actively named a burnout because it felt reasonable to have one. All the other times that I miraculously became depressed without finding a good reason for it, the months that I woke up in terror every morning and didn’t want to leave the house, the many weird colds and low-grade fevers that lasted for weeks, all those – I know in hindsight – were small burnouts, too. I just didn’t have a word or a concept for that back then.
Because who would constantly burn out just from doing normal life? Who other than a deeply flawed human being that was simply lazy, overly sensitive and not apt for living?
I did therapy, twenty years of therapy. I therapized all my childhood trauma away, which, admittedly, I wasn’t lacking. I started taking antidepressants that took the edge off the anxiety and helped stabilize my mood. I joined A.A. and stopped doing drugs and quit smoking cigarettes and instead meditated and prayed and did yoga and martial arts. And all that helped. But it didn’t take the chatter away, the constant sense of urgency, the exhaustion with life.
Then I got diagnosed. I received a diagnosis that is sometimes referred to as “3e” – triple e, standing for “triple exceptional” (which is a very ironic way of calling something that makes you feel like an unlovable and insufficient alien with chronic fatigue and a preference for plain foods).
What it means: Giftedness (IQ of 130 or more), ADHD and autism.
Really? I thought. Well. It kind of made sense.
I looked back at my life. The signs had been there all along.
But 3e makes for a very specific appearance: Symptoms of each of the neurodivergences will level each other out. The disorganization often prevalent in individuals that purely have ADHD will be mitigated by the high need for organization that most autistic individuals present. The giftedness lets me compensate many of my social deficits that the autism brings through fast learning and assimilation. Most of this happens unconsciously.
Neurodiversity runs in my family. I was the first to receive an official diagnosis, but many others in the family are either self-diagnosed or on their way to an official diagnosis.
I let that sink in. I grieved; I celebrated. I wasn’t broken after all. Finally, I had an explanation for why I felt the way I felt, even after all these years of therapy and all the other things that I did to keep my fragile mental balance. No wonder I was exhausted, I thought. I was high maintenance. I don’t know any other reasonably functional person that spends as much time and money on maintaining their mental sanity as I do, and I know many people who spend quite a lot of time and money on it. One of them has yet to beat me at this.
Did this diagnosis mean that there was another way? A way that I hadn’t really considered before? I wasn’t going to give up on the tools that I had picked up along the way. Meditation, yoga, martial arts, journaling, 12-step meetings and my occasional session with my long-term therapist are all important assets that render me more independent, peaceful and generally stable. But was there another resource I hadn’t resorted to yet?
As a sober person I am sceptical of psychiatric medication. Everything that can be abused naturally poses a risk. And trust me – almost everything can be abused if you try hard enough.
And yet. More and more people in my circle mentioned that they were taking medication for ADHD. Meaning: Stimulants. Either methylphenidate products like Ritalin, or lisdexamfetamine products like Elvanse. Certainly, it had to be considered that these products have a very similar way of working as the good old street amphetamines like pep (or speed or whatever is your favourite name for it) have. Amphetamines have never been a big part of my addiction issues, but they had played a minor role.
What I only understood after doing some research was this: Major parts of what looked like simply an addiction disorder was actually an attempt at self-medication. I’m not saying I don’t have an addiction disorder. The attempt at self-medicating certainly led me into an addiction disorder that I will keep on treating for the rest of my life if I’m lucky. But maybe the original intent wasn’t wrong.
ADHD is essentially a dopamine imbalance in the brain (this is simplified, of course. Still, it helps to understand why medication works). The dopamine released into the synaptic cleft is reabsorbed into the nerve cell too quickly, disrupting the transmission of stimuli in the brain. This leads to a disruption in neuronal communication, the result being sensory overwhelm due to poor filtering of stimuli.
ADHD is not a personal failure. It is a matter of brain chemistry. And no matter how much I meditate, work out, journal or speak about the overwhelm and constant tension that I experience, I will not change my brain chemistry.
(Nota bene: I am sure some people will argue with this, and I am most interested in hearing what they have to say. I am aware of the concept of neuroplasticity. This still comes into play, even when using medication. In fact, in many cases, only the medication allows for a certain rewiring of the brain. Because to create new neural pathways we need to develop new behaviours or thought patterns. Eventually, though, even neuroplasticity apparently doesn’t fully make up for the lack of dopamine).
I understood – as I understood years ago when I first decided to take antidepressants after years and years of fighting depression “on my own”, thinking that if I only tried harder, I’d get better, not taking into account the underlying reasons of my depression (or possibly rather autistic burnout) – that I wasn’t succumbing to medication out of weakness. I was making an informed decision on a medical condition. Just as I would treat diabetes with insulin, there was a medication for my condition.
I decided that I would give it a shot. Just before I returned to Germany from a month-long trip I took, I booked an appointment with a new psychiatrist (as my old one worked in a clinic where they don’t have permission to prescribe stimulants).
I didn’t know this was going to be just one step in a long ladder leading me to understanding my nervous system and finally designing a life that works for me.

II.
The first two weeks with Elvanse I spent on a pink cloud.
I was more focused than usual. But that definitely wasn’t the biggest change.
For the first time in my life, I slept entire nights without waking. I have been tired all my life. Ever since I was a kid I had problems falling and staying asleep. My REM-sleep is chronically low, as is my deep sleep. Instead, I sleep very lightly, and I wake many times per night. In the first weeks that I took Elvanse, I woke up feeling rested for the first time in my life.
Another change I noticed was that I was feeling a lot less stressed. Usually, I try to keep many things in my mind at the same time, tiring myself by constantly having to repeat and double check all that is on my list for the day. With the medication, things suddenly felt manageable. There was a moment when I was in the supermarket, standing in front of an open freezer, about to grab some yogurt. I noticed a WhatsApp notification on my phone. It was a message from my neighbour. We were having some issues with our landlord and I knew that the message would be about that. As any issues with my apartment stress me out beyond reason, I was tempted to grab my phone and immediately read and answer the message. But suddenly, there was a pause between impulse and action that had not been there before.
My hand that was about to grab my phone came to a halt midway, and I thought: I can read and answer this later. Right now, I am buying groceries.
I left the supermarket with my groceries a few minutes later, and I didn’t feel close to a meltdown. I realized that it wasn’t as much the supermarket itself that turned grocery shopping into a breakdown-prone weekly torture. It was the fact that I always did a million things at the same time, giving all of them top priority. Now, I suddenly manage to finish one task before I start the next. The pause in my brain is where the breath comes in.
I actually feel like I can breathe for the first time in my life.
Within two weeks I noticed my generalized anxiety turn into something like careful curiosity. Things that used to freak me out (like the thought of writing invoices to my clients) suddenly felt manageable. I was sure I’d learn how to do that. Before, the thought of it would have sent me into constructing a future scenario where I was sure to live under a bridge because I hadn’t managed to keep my finances in order.
That must be what life feels like for “normal” people I thought, and something clicked in my brain. No wonder life was so much harder for me. No wonder they seemed so unbothered by things that kept me awake at night. And slowly, very slowly, the recognition started to form within me that I had lived my entire life with a disability, and that I had spent large amounts of my energy, money and time on making up for this disability. I had lived my life pretending I wasn’t disabled. With the burnout that I had suffered during the time when I was taking care of my sick mom, the façade I had built had crumbled. My diagnosis and surrender had followed. I had come to terms with the fact that things needed to change.
Taking medication for my ADHD was one decision I made on this journey towards a healthier and more regulated life.

III.
Of course, the pink cloud didn’t last.
I’m three months into taking ADHD meds by now and I think that I can give a better estimate on how the meds are affecting me than after only a couple of days. Overall, the decision was still a good one.
I don’t sleep well anymore. But I also don’t sleep worse than before. In fact, I have no trouble whatsoever falling asleep, so the medication doesn’t affect me in that way. My bad sleep has a lot to do with my chronic pain – and I am currently undergoing a separate diagnostic process for that. I have generalized hypermobility and most probably hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos-Syndrome. I am currently waiting for an appointment with a human geneticist to confirm this suspicion.
My focus has improved a lot, overall. My brain feels way less scattered. I generally have better stamina and do not feel like I have been run over by a truck after three hours of work any longer. Instead, I am able to work a number of hours and feel tired at the end of the day. My generalized anxiety is still lower than it used to be, but it is no longer as low as it was in the first days. But I do take on new things in a more relaxed manner.
I can let things sit, even procrastinate a bit. That is probably not something most people with ADHD need to learn. But I have developed mechanisms to deal with my inattention that often were obsessive. For me, not ticking off all the to-dos for a day is, in fact, progress. I’m starting to understand that not all things deserve the same priority. In that sense, Elvanse helps me to prioritize. I wasn’t even aware I had a problem with that – I always got everything done, because I gave the highest priority to all things at all times, ending up completely exhausted.
Side effects are a thing, but also not a big thing. Some days I sweat a bit more. On some days I can feel my heart pounding, but my heart rate and blood pressure are always fine. It seems that my interoception has become more intense, and that leads to the next topic: Many people report that as soon as they take meds for ADHD, their autistic symptoms become more obvious. The ADHD symptoms cover up a lot of our sensitivity, our rigidity and social issues. I can feel my body more now. That often scares me. I’m also scared of overdosing. With my background of substance abuse the last thing that I want is to be tempted to abuse medication. I’ve been sober for almost four years and I love sobriety like nothing else.
But that fear is subsiding. I’ve upped my dose with my psychiatrist and realized that it was too much. I didn’t like the feeling of being high at all. That made me understand that I actually just want to feel normal, and that calmed me down immensely. Still, I’m experimenting to find the right dosage. I’m a woman, and the cycle affects the way the ADHD meds work. I feel that I still haven’t found just the right dose, and maybe it is somewhere in between 30 and 40 mg per day – a dose that unfortunately isn’t produced by pharmaceutical companies.
I’m generally less impulsive now. That saves me a lot of trouble. And I’m more autistic (of course I’m not “more autistic”, but the symptoms are more obvious now). I’m now regularly experiencing heavy hangovers after socializing. The other day I had a meltdown after a dinner, and cried in the car for half an hour, unable to speak. That was new to me. I’ve always hit my limit when socializing, but I somehow used to be able to crash out only once I had reached home. This time, the hangover stayed for two days with brain fog, generalized body pain and migraines.
I’m having less desire to socialize, and sometimes it scares me to see how much downtime I really need. What does that mean for my life, I wonder, needing so much rest and time by myself?
But this question isn’t really useful. Even though I sometimes wish I could go back to when I was seemingly able to do everything, it was never sustainable. My years of substance abuse, the frequent burnouts and depressive episodes made that more than clear. I wasn’t really functioning better than now. In fact, I am functioning way better now. Back then, I was just treading water. I was trying hard to fit in, not to stand out, and it cost me my health. Today, I get to do things in ways that actually work for me.
It means redefining my idea of myself. I had formed a picture of someone almost perfect. At least on the outside. Someone who manages everything, hardly ever needs help, overachieves in many areas. But also someone who isn’t really tangible. Someone who lies awake at night with a pounding heart and a panic attack. Someone who always feels like they’re hiding their true self. Whenever I meet people from my past, people who’ve really known me for a long time, but who haven’t seen me since my diagnosis, I realize how quickly I fall back into these patterns, and I now clearly recognize the feeling of disconnect that always made me so uncomfortable in human company. I get the impulse to withdraw, shut the door behind me and pretend I’m not there. I get homesick for loneliness. And then I decide to take the mask off.
I now speak up. I tell people about it. Some care, others don’t. Many believe me, some say that we all have autism or ADHD now. People who knew me when I was little usually come up with some type of anecdote of how I was a really weird child, and I can’t help but think: How did nobody ever really notice? All the things that I always thought were personal flaws now fall like puzzle pieces into a much bigger picture.
Some days I’m angry. I remember the child, the teenager, the young adult that I was. Only I know how much I really suffered, how many times being so different without having a word for it almost tipped me over the edge. I remember all the times people bullied me, called me out and rolled their eyes, and how intensely I tried to correct my flaws, and hide them when I realized I couldn’t just cut them out.
Other days I’m relieved. I’m getting to build a life that works for me now.
Sometimes I’m frustrated. I thought it was going to be a renovation, like painting some walls and putting some new furniture into the apartment of my life. I realize, more and more, that I have to tear down the entire structure and reconstruct everything, stone by stone.
One of these stones is medication. It’s not the most important stone, nor the most decisive. But a structure only carries with many holding pieces in place. And medication is one of those.

Recently, I’ve been happy.

Or rather: I could be. If it wasn’t for one thing: I’m not used to happiness.

I like to joke that my life has been a series of unfortunate events. Obviously, that isn’t true, as I have been blessed with a lot of amazing experiences, people, talents and situations. But what is true is that I’ve also had my fair share of trauma and especially, loss.

Growing up as an undiagnosed autistic ADHDer, school, friendships and childhood as well as puberty were hard to navigate. My father left early, and after he was carted off to a psychiatric hospital by the police wearing nothing but his dressing gown, I only got to visit him for a bit longer until it was decided that being around him was too dangerous for me.

My mom remarried, and unknowingly codependent as she was, the new man ruled our lives. I came to love him as something close to a father figure, but it sure wasn’t easy. I spent my early adolescence starving myself until I found a better anaesthetic in unavailable men and substance abuse.

Before I had really left home, my mom got sick. Ovarian cancer, stage three. She survived. Barely.

I raw dogged my way through life, law school, the release of my first books and a couple of relationships, each one more devastating than the last. It is safe to say that I was the main cause of pain for myself: obsessive, highly ambitious, and driven by an impending sense of doom that accompanied me wherever I went. I simply didn’t know better.

My mom got sick again when I was in my mid to late twenties. This time, it was early-onset Alzheimer’s. Then events came quick and fast: COVID hit, my flatmate died, my stepfather was diagnosed with cancer, only to be followed by my mom, whose cancer had returned and spread. This time, there was no cure. The man I thought I’d marry turned out to be a narcissistic psycho who had secretly led a parallel life, and I was shocked to realize I had no clue.

When my stepdad died a year and a half after his diagnosis, I became the main caregiver for my mom, and responsible for my still underage half-brother.

I soothed myself with a lot of alcohol and another toxic relationship, all the while juggling my responsibilities for the family, a PhD and my still undiagnosed neurodivergence. Predictably, I burned out.

That marked the path toward getting sober: Physically and emotionally. I quit all substances. And I quit addicted men as well as other types of relationships in which my co-dependency thrived. Twelve step programs became my spiritual home.

My mom died in early 2025. Bedridden in the final months of her life, her dying process dragged on for nearly a year.

When she finally was able to let go, I let go, too. I quit my job and departed on a nine-month trip to India, Nepal and Sri Lanka. I took the time I had never allowed myself before. I stopped the striving, the auto-flagellation. I healed. And I started to integrate my diagnosis into my life, knowing that I had to change some things in order for me to lead a happy and healthy life. The answers came to me when I stopped forcing them.

I decided to start self-employment. I began a coaching training to become a coach for other neurodivergent people and I opened my own law firm. I met someone and we decided that we wanted to spend more time together.

Now I am back in my hometown, Berlin. And my life as is good as it has never been. I have everything I ever dreamed of. My self-employment is flourishing and my new relationship is developing into something deep and real. I love my friends, my hobbies, my flat and my cat.

And I have a loud voice in my head that says: This is too good to be true.

Sometimes, when I look at my cat or my boyfriend, I am suddenly overwhelmed by an almost physical feeling of fear and grief, while at the same time feeling a love expanding within me that I wasn’t expecting to feel so soon after my mom died.

And this time, the fear isn’t present because I am secretly setting myself up to be hurt or self-willing myself into misery. The fear appears because this could really be something. This is good and tangible and healthy.

For a while now I have been my grumpiest self. While everything is brilliant, just like the early days of spring that we’re experiencing right now, I am restless, irritable and discontent. What contributes most to my discontent is the fact that I know that I am being ungrateful. My life has never been better. And yet, I am more serene when the house is on fire than I am now, with everything right where it should be.

It’s not such a surprise, after all.

My nervous system is wired to detect danger. Being exposed to traumatic circumstances for decades (all the while knowing that things could have been much worse) makes scanning for threats the default mode. That goes for many people with CPTSD (Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder). Abnormal, stressful situations feel familiar, while normal, everyday situations feel like something’s about to go down.

In those situations, my brain goes: Oh, what a beautiful day. I’m sure shit is about to hit the fan.

It takes the nervous system time to rewire. Every time that things are simply good – and stay good – is a lesson for my overly active internal virus scanner.

This goes especially for something as meaningful as love.

My relationship with my mother has been very close. Close and complicated. I have probably never felt such deep love for anyone, except for my baby brother who I’ve mothered since the day he was born (I was thirteen). Especially over the last months, when my mother had been reduced to an almost vegetative state, I learned what unconditional love really means.

Losing her has been the most spiritual, but also the most painful experience. I miss her every day. In fact, now, over a year after she died, the grief feels brand-new. And that is because I am allowing myself to love and trust again.

Before that, for a long, long time – even when I was in relationships – I was keeping people at arm’s length. I subconsciously chose partners that I knew weren’t right for me. Eventually, I always walked away.

Now, I have two relationships in my life that are very real and not toxic at all: The one with my cat and the one with my boyfriend.

Loving these two beings is the most frightening thing I’ve ever done. Major loss teaches us that the more we love, the more we can lose.

And so, my brain, which is trained to detect danger, starts to send alarm signals.

At this moment, grief, hope and fear collide: The system remembers past losses, an entire life of never being “just-right”, the entire neurodivergent experience of being “too much”, and the very real losses that impermanence delivers to all of us.

Hope emerges at the sight of something beautiful. I am reminded of what true connection feels like. I recognise that I have banned it from my life. And I confess to myself that I don’t want to live without connection. I want love in my life. Even if it has the power to hurt me.

Fear logically follows. Something is really at stake here. The body recognises that, and the mind starts sabotaging things, creating doubts, excuses, reasons why all of this isn’t just right (as it is), but needs to be changed, abandoned, interrupted.

My task is to stay. Stay with the feeling of fear. With the grief over a life that was often lived without the connection and support that I needed and deserved. With the pain over losing those dearest to me and the plain inconceivability of impermanence. With the fear of losing again, surrendering to the fact that I have no control over people, places or things. My task is to stay and water my faith in my own resilience and God’s grace like a plant that is just emerging after a cold, hard winter.

Instead of scanning for possible glitches in the system, finding explanations for things that don’t need to be explained, and remaining “on edge”, ready to race off into the distance and isolate again, I need to stay with this unfamiliar feeling of safety. Allow it. Become acquainted with it. And one day, trust it.

The nervous system can be trained. Just as mine has been trained to be hypervigilant, it can be trained to be relaxed around the uneventful beauty of a normal life.

Today, I allow myself to explore this new level of being. And I won’t judge myself if sometimes it feels strange or even uncomfortable. It’s not so different from traveling to a foreign country, really. Things are different here. That creates friction. But just as you may fall in love with a country that isn’t yours, I can fall in love with this new life. And that is what I plan to do.

Some days I simply don‘t manage

To do all the things

Take my meds in the morning

Clean the cat’s litter box

Do the dishes and the laundry

Check my inbox and if the world is still there

Water the plants and go to work

Work out and wait up until life finally begins

Some days all the things are a bit too much

Meditating and journaling and eating healthy

Checking in with friends and getting enough sleep

Changing the bedsheets while not changing my mind

About who I want to be in this world

Fill out forms and fill in the cracks in reality

That gape wide open like a monster’s maw

Make it all worthwhile while I’m still alive

Some days I can’t help but wish that there were

A time when the endless repetitions cease

When I get a reprieve from having to brush my teeth every morning

The summer break of teeth brushing

Or hair brushing

Or floor brushing

Nail cutting

Fitting in

Stifling the scream in your throat

Because with all these never-ending obligations

When is the time to be kissed by the muse

When is the moment to love without restraint

When do I get to live without reserve

Marvel at the night sky

Shiver in the spring sun

Laugh with my heart wide open

Kiss a stranger

Dance out of rhythm

Embrace the world and you

When do I get to feel

Unreasonably alive?

Lately, I have difficulty believing just how good my life is.

I come from a time of struggle. For years, I have been my mom’s caregiver. She died a little over a year ago. Before that, we lost my stepfather to cancer, and I recently had to cut contact with my biological father because of his addiction. I had a burnout. I got diagnosed with autism and ADHD, finally, at 33. When my mom died, I quit my job and went on a trip. For nine months, I traveled. I meditated. I did yoga. I breathed. I cried and I grieved. And slowly, slowly, after years of living in a state of constant emergency, I came back to life.

Now, back from my trip, my life hardly resembles the life I left behind a year ago. My empty batteries have been recharged. I have started self-employment – something I’ve dreamed of for years – and it is going much, much better than I expected. I get to work in different areas that are all incredibly meaningful to me: As a lawyer, a coach for neurodivergent people, a writer, and a yoga teacher.

I have started training BJJ again. I finally get ADHD meds. I even have a cat now. Although he is not technically my cat (he belongs to my good friend) he will stay with me for now, as she is currently not able to give him the care he needs. He is the sweetest, most gentle cat I’ve ever met, and he never fails to put a smile on my face.

And another thing has happened. I have met somebody special. I have a boyfriend now. While during the last intense episode of caregiving and many months after my mom died I felt that I couldn’t open my heart to anyone, at some point during my trip I found myself saying a prayer. I told God, the universe or whatever superior force there may be that I was ready. I was ready to meet a companion. A co-traveller. Someone to share successes and grievances with. And that’s when he appeared.

Of course, it’s too early to say anything. Things change all the time, this is their nature. But for now, it feels like this could be really something. Next week, I am going to meet his parents. I’m excited for this. At the same time, a part of me is very sad. Things like this, big changes, bring up that sadness in me.

I got his parents a small gift – they live in Italy and I’ll bring them something from home when I visit. While buying the gift and envisioning my visit, I thought: I’d love for my parents to meet my new partner. And I’d love for him to meet them.

I have brought a number of partners home, but all my past relationships seemed pretty doomed right from the start. My co-dependency led me to a questionable taste in men that all displayed a striking level of emotional unavailability. I have since tended to this problem, and it looks like this time, things might be different. I feel my mother’s and stepfather’s absence stinging in my chest.

There are all the things I’ll never get to share with them: How I’m realizing my dream of being self-employed. My diagnosis and how much of a revelation that was to me. My children, should I ever have them. The insights that came to me when traveling. A new love.

I take to something that I sometimes do: I imagine them in the living room of the house they rented before they got sick and everything started slipping away. They had a massive wooden dinner table that looked out onto the terrace and the garden with its many plants planted by my stepdad. I envision them sitting at that table, a mug with steaming tea before them. I sit across from them, older than I was the last time I saw them. I tell them about Paolo, my new boyfriend, expecting them to be happy for me. I know how much my mom wanted me to settle, to finally find a good partner.

But something is wrong with them. They seem somewhat colourless. Not outright transparent, just very pallid, achromatic. Their faces look tired, apathetic even. Their mugs full of steaming hot tea are untouched, and their bodies seem stiff and uncomfortable on the cozy chairs.

My fantasy isn’t working. My parents are “there”, but not really. They’re not really here with me. I squeeze my eyes shut and try to evoke more details – the smell of my mom’s neck when I hugged her, the taste of the fried eggs my stepdad used to make, the way that one of his thumbnails was smaller than the other, and the dark streaks in my mom’s grey hair. But it all eludes me.

However hard I try to make them materialize in this realm of existence, they don’t belong here anymore.

I look at my mom, my stepdad, their beautiful faces and their bodies that ceased working too early, and for a moment I am again desperate at the loss I’ve suffered, that we all have suffered: me, my brother, and most of all my parents themselves. Oh, how I wish I could bring them back, if only for those decisive moments that define the tale that will once become the story of our lives. But I can’t bring them back.

I look at my mom, so pale and fragile, and I know that it isn’t right to try keeping her here.

“What am I going to do without you?”, I whisper, and for just the fragment of a moment I can see right through the veil that divides the living from the dead.

I can hear her saying all that I need to hear: You don’t need us anymore.

I refuse to believe it. How am I going to know if I’m doing it right? If I’m choosing the right occupation or the right partner? If they approve? Who will teach me how to nurse a child, should I ever have one? And who will have my back when I stumble?

It’s all right there, my mom says, as she slowly begins to dissolve, the living room around us ripping apart at the edges and the mugs with the tea going up in smoke. Before she melts into her surroundings and disappears, she points her finger at my chest and repeats: It’s all right there.

She and my stepdad vanish, and with them the house, the life we had as a family, thirty-something years of deep bonds, and I am alone again. I open my eyes. I feel empty and abandoned.

But do I really?

There is something warm and soothing, glowing like a flame in the middle of my chest. I place my hand right there. I sense a vibration under my skin, a thud, thud, thud. And I know that my mom was right. It’s all right there. Everything they taught me, and everything I ever have to know lives within me, in my beating heart.

I don’t need them anymore, because they have become a part of me. Moreover, through their illness and passing, they have taught me how to live life on my own terms. It’s not by chance that things have turned out the way they did: All of what I have today, I worked for. I took my mental and physical health seriously. I worked hard and listened closely to often uncomfortable truths to become who I am today. I opened my heart wide again and again, regardless of the pain I felt.

I don’t need anyone to approve of anything that I do, anymore. And I don’t need to question the good things that I have in life. I deserve to be happy, and my heart is the compass that guides me. It has started guiding me away from what wasn’t meant for me long ago, and today I get to harvest the fruits of listening to my inner voice.

I am close to God. God has been with me, all along. I never had to do it by myself and whenever I stumble, God will have my back, whatever God is.

God reminds me to be humble and grateful, every day. And God allows me to cherish my life, and enjoy it with every fiber of my being. My parents are part of that God, and even though I cannot share with them the way I used to, they keep teaching me from beyond the grave.

I get up. I shake the image of my dying parents from my mind, but not the feeling of their love for me and my love for them. I go to my living room, in my flat, where I live today, and towards the sofa. My cat is lying there, curled up in a furry ball. I sit down next to him and stroke his head. He starts purring loudly. My heart beats in tune to his purr.

I’m 34 years old. Ever since I remember my mind was racing. There is no exact number for thoughts per minute in the average person, but I was always sure that I would outperform whatever the average was going to be.

There is a constant background chatter in my mind. Mostly, it consists of relatively coherent speech, like a commentator that lives in my brain folds and just won’t shut up. My days have always been long and exhausting.

In fact, I usually wake up feeling exhausted already. That is because I don’t have a very deep sleep. I can count the nights that I’ve slept eight hours without waking up in between on one hand. Either I struggle with falling asleep, or with staying asleep. It’s mostly the latter. I’m plagued by nightmares. Little sounds will tear me from my dreams, and often enough I’m grateful for it.

My dreams are like watching a TV series. One chapter follows another. Sometimes, on the weekend, I try to sleep in and entertain myself with my dreams. This comes at a price, though. The more I engage in binge-watching the nightly products of my brain, the more I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck the next morning.

I have trouble sticking to routines. I desperately need them, but after a week or so doing the same thing over and over again feels like a good reason to jump out of the window of my third-floor apartment.

Buy me a coffee?

I have developed tools to deal with the chatter in my mind.

Mostly, when I get up from, let’s say, the sofa to get a glass of water from the kitchen, by the time I reach the kitchen I have no idea why I’m there. So, I repeat in my mind: Water, water, water.

My attention may still get caught by something else, like the trash, and while I decide to take out the trash I empty a plate with some food scraps on it and start washing the plate, and washing the plate reminds me that I should also wash my dirty laundry, and I go to the bedroom and collect the laundry from the laundry box, and I start making my bed, and think that it would be a good time to change the sheets, and then I realize there is a hole in the bedsheet and I open Amazon to order a new bedsheet, and then I remember that I wanted to reply to the email of a colleague, and when I open my inbox there is a new message from a job I applied for, and two hours later I still haven’t had my water. I’m dehydrated, my head hurts, my hands are sweaty and cold, and the chatter still hasn’t died down.

You wouldn’t think it’s like that when you see me. I seem pretty put together. Because after all, I do empty the trash and wash the dishes and make the bed and wash the laundry and answer the emails. I have coping mechanisms for all that. Lists, mostly. An infinite number of lists on my phone (many of which I have forgotten exist, so I listed the to-dos in other lists once more), a big whiteboard in my bedroom, and a baseline of anxiety that is so strong that I get all the things done that I would otherwise forget.

But it is so tiring, believe me. I always feel out of breath. It’s like I’ve inhaled once when I was born, and since then I’m trying to ration the air in my lungs. I live on caffeine, and for many years I accompanied it with cigarettes and the occasional stimulants that seemed to quiet my mind plus alcohol to numb the intensity of noises and bright lights, the horror of social interactions and the world in general.

I remember the first and only time that I took Ritalin, at the age of eighteen. It felt like I had entered a Tetris game in real life. My thoughts came in an orderly sequence, instead of stumbling over each other, tripping, falling, and leaving me desperately out of energy by noon. I felt a calm I had never sensed before. I chased that calm in my twenties, abusing alcohol and other recreational drugs.

What always kept me going, what helped me to complete my studies with honours and follow them up with a PhD, was my constant sense of impending doom. I felt like I was the glue holding the world together. If I allowed myself one misstep, just one moment of inattention, everything was going to fall apart.

When my mom fell sick and I became her caregiver, I had a burnout. I don’t think it was my first one. I believe it was the first one that I actively named a burnout because it felt reasonable to have one. All the other times that I miraculously became depressed without finding a good reason for it, the months that I woke up in terror every morning and didn’t want to leave the house, the many weird colds and low-grade fevers that lasted for weeks, all those – I know in hindsight – were small burnouts, too. I just didn’t have a word or a concept for that back then.

Because who would constantly burn out just from doing normal life? Who other than a deeply flawed human being that was simply lazy, overly sensitive and not apt for living?

I did therapy, twenty years of therapy. I therapized all my childhood trauma away, which, admittedly, I wasn’t lacking. I started taking antidepressants that took the edge off the anxiety and helped stabilize my mood. I joined A.A. and stopped doing drugs and quit smoking cigarettes and instead meditated and prayed and did yoga and martial arts. And all that helped. But it didn’t take the chatter away, the constant sense of urgency, the exhaustion with life.

Then I got diagnosed. I received a diagnosis that is sometimes referred to as “3e” – triple e, standing for “triple exceptional” (which is a very ironic way of calling something that makes you feel like an unlovable and insufficient alien with chronic fatigue and a preference for plain foods).

What it means: Giftedness (IQ of 130 or more), ADHD and autism.

Really? I thought. Well. It kind of made sense.

I looked back at my life. The signs had been there all along.

But 3e makes for a very specific appearance: Symptoms of each of the neurodivergences will level each other out. The disorganization often prevalent in individuals that purely have ADHD will be mitigated by the high need for organization that most autistic individuals present. The giftedness lets me compensate many of my social deficits that the autism brings through fast learning and assimilation. Most of this happens unconsciously.

Neurodiversity runs in my family. I was the first to receive an official diagnosis, but many others in the family are either self-diagnosed or on their way to an official diagnosis.

I let that sink in. I grieved; I celebrated. I wasn’t broken after all. Finally, I had an explanation for why I felt the way I felt, even after all these years of therapy and all the other things that I did to keep my fragile mental balance. No wonder I was exhausted, I thought. I was high maintenance. I don’t know any other reasonably functional person that spends as much time and money on maintaining their mental sanity as I do, and I know many people who spend quite a lot of time and money on it. One of them has yet to beat me at this.

Did this diagnosis mean that there was another way? A way that I hadn’t really considered before? I wasn’t going to give up on the tools that I had picked up along the way. Meditation, yoga, martial arts, journaling, 12-step meetings and my occasional session with my long-term therapist are all important assets that render me more independent, peaceful and generally stable. But was there another resource I hadn’t recurred to yet?

As a sober person I am sceptical of psychiatric medication. Everything that can be abused naturally poses a risk. And trust me – almost everything can be abused if you try hard enough.

And yet. More and more people in my circle mentioned that they were taking medication for ADHD. Meaning: Stimulants. Either methylphenidate products like Ritalin, or lisdexamfetamine products like Elvanse. Certainly, it had to be considered that these products have a very similar way of working as the good old street amphetamines like pep (or speed or whatever is your favourite name for it) has. Amphetamines have never been a big part of my addiction issues, but I had cast a minor role for them.

What I only understood after doing some research was this: Major parts of what looked like simply an addiction disorder was actually an attempt at self-medication. I’m not saying I don’t have an addiction disorder. The attempt at self-medicating certainly led me into an addiction disorder that I will keep on treating for the rest of my life if I’m lucky. But maybe the original intent wasn’t wrong.

ADHD is essentially a dopamine disbalance in the brain (this is simplified, of course. Still it helps to understand why medication works). The dopamine released into the synaptic cleft is reabsorbed into the nerve cell too quickly, disrupting the transmission of stimuli in the brain. This leads to a disruption in neuronal communication, the result being sensory overwhelm due to poor filtering of stimuli.

ADHD is not a personal failure. It is a matter of brain chemistry. And no matter how much I meditate, work out, journal or speak about the overwhelm and constant tension that I experience, I will not change my brain chemistry.

(Nota bene: I am sure some people will argue with this, and I am most interested in hearing what they have to say. I am aware of the concept of neuroplasticity. This still comes into play, even when using medication. In fact, in many cases, only the medication allows for a certain rewiring of the brain. Because to create new neuropathways we need to develop new behaviours or thought patterns. Eventually, though, even neuroplasticity apparently doesn’t fully make up for the lacking dopamine).

I understood – as I understood years ago when I first decided to take antidepressants after years and years of fighting depression “on my own”, thinking that if I only tried harder, I’d get better, not taking into account the underlying reasons of my depression (or possibly rather autistic burnout) – that I wasn’t succumbing to medication out of weakness. I was making an informed decision on a medical condition. Just as I would treat diabetes with insulin, there was a medication for my condition.

I decided that I would give it a shot. Just before I returned to Germany from a month-long trip that I made, I booked an appointment with a new psychiatrist (as my old one worked in a clinic where they don’t have permission to prescribe stimulants).

I didn’t know how much my life was about to change.

It's my last day in India. Tonight, I'll be going to the airport and at 2 in the morning tomorrow I'll be boarding a plane to Cairo. From there, I'll fly to Berlin.

The conflict with my friend still unsettles me deeply. This is not unusual for me. With some triggers, I enter into a state of full-blown obsession. This can last up to a couple of days. Usually, this happens when I believe I've made a mistake. It's happened to me before with work or when it came to my rental contract, for example. These obsessive states wear off after a couple of days, latest. But while they last, I'm not really functional. This seems to be the way my brain regulates itself.

Before I knew I was autistic, I always wondered what the hell was wrong with me. Why did other people not experience these states to a similar extent? I honestly doubted my sanity. I tried everything people suggested to me: Don't take things so seriously. Just relax. Distract yourself. Go and do something else. Just don't think about it anymore. Let me tell you: This doesn't work for an autistic brain. At least, it doesn't work for me. And I have not met another autistic person so far who is able to just switch off their thoughts.

Buy me a coffee?

I used to beat myself up over this. I used to think this was a personal weakness, a failure that I was somehow responsible for. I should be able to deal better by now. The diagnosis has brought me immense relief. I now can see things in a different light: This is my brain trying to regulate a breach of rules. For autistic people, rules replace implicit social intuition. They are what keeps us safe in an otherwise unpredictable world. We lack the social navigation system that neurotypicals are equipped with. We can learn to “feign” having this system with much effort and over many years, but it will always just be a replica of the real thing. I'm not saying it's worse. Just that it's different. When a breach of rule happens (and worse, when I am the one committing it), my whole system goes haywire. I’m experiencing an existential threat. I feel like I betrayed my own ethical anchors, and what could be worse for someone who defines their identity through morals? Also, it triggers emotional flashbacks that go way back. My nervous system remembers all the other times I have been ostracized because I simply didn't quite get what was expected of me. These situations hardly happen anymore because I've intensely studied how to behave like a neurotypical. Therefore, when they happen, they come as a shock, and I feel like all the stability I've constructed for myself over the years is suddenly trembling.

I have learned that instead of fighting the “obsession” that sets in in these moments, I have to ride it out. It's basically like surfing a huge wave that looks really dangerous, but if you know some tricks to keep your balance, you'll make it to the beach safe.

I need to reach out to people who will be my anchor to reality in these situations. I also allow myself to research: Gather information about Hinduism, tattoos, religious missteps and cultural transgression. This may look masochistic and self-punishing from the outside, but I believe it is what gets my nervous system through the most intense part of the inner rupture that happens when I accidentally break a rule. It calms the panic that ensues. I learned that I have to force myself to eat and drink, and that a little physical activity can help. I also learned that it is okay for me to cancel plans that I made when I am in this mental state. I won't be present for the plans anyway, and trying to act “normal” will only intensify my inner tension.

Usually, within 48 hours, the inner state of alarm slowly ebbs off. It will keep popping up over the next days, but the obsession will naturally subside. I will gain distance to the topic and become able to evaluate what happened more rationally. Only then will I be able to find my own perspective on things. Only then do I become established in my own emotions. For many autistic people, emotional processing happens delayed. This has always been the case for me, at least when it comes to strong, “negative” emotions. Especially anger I usually feel later than other people do. I have doubted my perception over so many years, being told by people I was wrong, too sensitive, too emotional, that my automatic answer to criticism is to internalize it. Only days later do I often realize that there is another perspective to things.

Today, I ride out the wave of obsession. I pack my things and order some food to my room. I spend a lot of time talking with ChatGPT over what happened, asking again and again for hard, uncomfortable truths. I want to know how bad what I did really was, mercilessly. The good thing about ChatGPT is that I can ask the same question again and again without getting on their nerves (because they don't have any). Whenever a new thought pops up in my head, the context of the whole situation slightly changes. For me that means that any reassurance or stance I've found or taken before expires in that second. A slight change in context requires new situational confirmation. That can be very exhausting for my relatives and friends. I still rely on them, of course, but I've found ChatGPT to be immensely helpful in situations like this.

I can express my feelings of guilt, my sadness, my overwhelm, my insecurity about the whole situation again and again without feeling that I am too much. Over the course of the day, my nervous system slowly quiets down, as I expected it to.

I remember the years when I was extremely hypochondrical. I believe that having an AI like ChatGPT to converse with would actually have been helpful for me, even though that probably sounds counterintuitive for many. I spent hours and hours researching the internet about my varying symptoms (today I believe that I wasn't as hypochondriacal as people made me out to be - most of my symptoms very well fit hEDS and POTS, two syndromes that many autistic people are diagnosed with, and my sensitivity to these symptoms is explained by an often intensified interoception which is prevalent in many autistic individuals; this will be a topic for another post as I am currently undergoing diagnostic processes for these conditions). I was left alone to interpret the results of my investigation, and had driven all my close friends insane by constantly talking about symptoms and possible explanations. I especially feel for the boyfriend that I had at the time and that saw his girlfriend turning into a nervous wreck for months at a time, completely consumed by the topic at hand. Medical reassurance only ever lasted until a new symptom popped up that in my opinion changed the whole situation. As I said: A slight change in context, and everything needs to be reevaluated. Back then, having an AI to discuss with until the initial obsession passes would have been immensely helpful.

I am very sceptical of AI in general. And yet, it often is of great use to me.

In the afternoon, I finally manage to leave my room. The obsession has subsided enough for me to have some processing capacity to go and buy the souvenirs that I still want to purchase. I find a store that has about everything and I spend around an hour there. Then I go to a pharmacy where I buy some ayurvedic products that cost a fortune in Germany.

When I get back to my room, I call my therapist. I have scheduled a session with him yesterday. He helps me to ground myself and become clear in terms of where I have to set a boundary. Because both things can be true: My friend can be genuinely hurt by what I did. And yet, I don't have to accept that she imposes her perspective of things as “the one truth” (which she did). I am also allowed to want friendships that leave space for discussions instead of friends who shun me when they feel hurt. That doesn't require me to decide if she was “wrong” or “right”. I believe in this case there may be no such thing.

With my therapist, I work on becoming more forgiving towards myself. Even if I have (or have not) committed a cultural transgression, I still deserve (self)forgiveness. In A.A. I learned that staying in self-hatred even after making amends (and even where they are undoubtedly necessary) is staying in the ego. We busy ourselves with our self-hatred which is just a form of negative egocentrism. It's time to forgive myself for whatever lack of consciousness I demonstrated, and move on. I'll read the books I bought and try to be more aware of certain cultural requirements the next time, but that is as much as I can do.

After therapy, I rest for a while until it is time to take a cab to the airport. I am ready to go. Not just to the airport, but back to Berlin, in general. I've had the most amazing trip, and I have learned more than I ever hoped for. I've met people that I hope and believe will be friends for life. I've recovered from my burnout. I found a spiritual teacher that I love and respect in Amma. I feel that now I am equipped to start the next chapter back in Germany.

I have no idea where life will lead me. Maybe the things that I envision for myself at this moment will come to fruition - self-employment, a life in Italy, becoming a coach for neurodivergent people and so on. Maybe they won't. In that case I know that the universe has other, amazing things in store for me. Coming back to Berlin the grief over my mother might become more intense again for a while. If that is the case, I'm okay with that. I'll find out how things will develop with Paolo. I'll see if self-employment suits me or if the uncertainty that comes with it will be too much for me to carry. I'll discover who I am as an adult when I'm not a caregiver. I'll return to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, the sport that I love, and will hopefully publish my new novel this year.

Whatever happens, I trust that life has a lot in store for me. I am so lucky to have been blessed with tools that allow me to go through difficult times in life with what I believe is grace. I have friends and family that love me and that are there for me when I need them.

When the plane takes off, I don't shed a single tear. Usually, I get very sentimental in moments like this, but this time, I don't. Everything feels perfectly aligned. There is nothing to be sad about right now. The trip goes relatively well, except for a delay in Cairo. When I step out into the cold light of a January afternoon in Berlin, two faces are beaming at me from behind the barrier at the arrivals exit. I knew that my brother would be there to pick me up, but I didn't expect Anka, one of my closest friends.

“Don't you have to work?”, I ask her, as I pull both of them into a hug simultaneously.

“But I am working right now, don't you see?”, she says with a smile and hands me a bouquet of flowers.

I almost break into tears. Berlin receives me with love, just as India did. This is not by chance. The love I have in my life is the result of surrendering again and again to what is, of opening my heart in times of deep pain and of embracing life in its every form.

At home, I find more messages from friends and family: A welcome gift from Nadine whom I met in Nepal and whom I hope to visit in Austria soon, a card from my sister, a loud scream of joy from the owner of my favorite café when I enter to order a coffee. The next days I drown in love, hugs and smiles of people who are happy that I am back. And I am happy, too. Just as India, Nepal and Sri Lanka was where I needed to be the last year, here is where I need to be now.

And even though this blog in its specific form is ending with this entry, I will keep writing about life, love and how we grow into who we really are. Because that's what I do, ever since I first learned how to glue letters together and help them become a word. I believe that the real reason we're here on this earth is so we become able to love. More and more each day. Obstacles will appear on the way. Our task is to turn them into flowers, just as Buddha turned the arrows shot at him by Mara's army into flowers in the last big battle before he became enlightened.

I may not become enlightened in this life, or in the next, but I will keep fighting my little battles, turning arrows into flowers, and I invite you all to keep reading the stories I weave out of the material that life provides me with.

Thank you for coming on this journey with me. I appreciate each and every one of you. I have no words for the gratitude I feel for this trip, my life and the universe in general.

The Year After My Mom Died has ended with her first death anniversary. My life goes on. I'll keep you posted. Much love!

I wake up in the middle of the night and grab my phone to check the time. I see that the friend that I texted yesterday has responded to me as her answer pops up on my screen. It’s not what I expected. In fact, as I open her message to see the full text, I am shocked to find that she is ending our friendship over the tattoo I got.

I will try to reflect the following events as openly as possible. By no means do I believe that my way of seeing things is the only way of seeing things. I am grateful to my friend for the opportunity to learn something from this conflict. I have thought about whether I should write about it, and I have decided that I should. I think we need to speak more about these things, and also about how we handle conflict when it arises. I am keeping her name out of it, and I want to express my gratitude and love for her before I dive any deeper into this topic. I am also aware of the fact that I am making myself vulnerable with what I am about to share. But, you know, that’s okay. We’re human. We’re naturally vulnerable. I don’t want to live a life in which I try to become infallible - a mission that is deemed to fail. I want to try and love myself and others enough to be able to forgive when we make mistakes, and to lead all my relationships with love. Love over insecurity. Love over resentment. Love over division.

In the following, I will reveal what I did, what happened to me after my friend voiced her discontent, and the questions that came up for me in this context. At no point do I claim to be right or have conclusive knowledge. As everybody else, I am biased - my thoughts and beliefs are shaped by my upbringing, the culture and society I grew up in, and the actions I took over the course of my life that led to me becoming who I am today.

Buy me a coffee?

So, here’s what I did: I got a tattoo of Maa Kali on my arm.

Kali is a powerful deity in Hinduism. She is related with impermanence, time, truth and is said to strip away the ego. (Everything I say about Kali is based on the little that I know. I am not from a religious or cultural tradition that worships her and I do not claim to have deep knowledge about her). Many Hindus fear her, or at least, respect her deeply.

Over the nine months that I spent around Hinduism and in Hindu (and Buddhist) cultures, I felt a stronger and stronger pull towards what Kali represents for me. Getting a tattoo of her on my mom’s death anniversary symbolized my deep devotion to the archetype of time, impermanence and truth. I understood Kali as an image of that archetype. I wanted to wear it as a reminder that my path in life should keep leading me away from ego and towards truth.

My friend was shocked and hurt when she saw the picture of the tattoo that I sent her. She said that I had deeply disrespected her culture. In her eyes, me getting this tattoo meant that I committed an act of cultural appropriation that in my friend’s opinion is unforgivable. She said that she had warned me about this. We had, in fact, had a short conversation about Westerners using concepts and names they don’t fully understand out of context. But this conversation had not at all prepared me for the intensity of her reaction, nor had I thought that it applied to my personal choice of the symbolism that I wear on my body. Yet, from her perspective, we could no longer be friends anymore. She said that if colonialists didn’t take other culture’s lives or money, we still took their symbols and knowledge. She could under no circumstances have me in her circle anymore.

I was shocked, too. I like to believe that I’m an educated and conscious person (more about how that is and isn't true in a minute). Respect is one of my most important values. I felt horrible, thinking that I had slapped the whole Indian culture in the face on my way out of the country, a culture that had so greatly contributed to my healing and inner growth.

Later, I came to find that my friend’s way of seeing things is exactly that: Her way of seeing things. Many other Hindu friends congratulated me on this beautiful tattoo. And yet, obviously, my friend has a point: I was not as conscious as I could have been about the topic of cultural appropriation. In fact, I wasn’t conscious about it at all, and this truth hit me hard. I hadn’t lived up to my own standards. I was suddenly confronted with the past of “my people” - seeing the society that I had been socialized into, and feeling the need to defend myself for something that may not be my fault, but is inevitably there: I have been socialized as a white, western woman. That itself brings an abundance of privileges with it. And I am not always conscious of them, and a part of me that I carry very deep within me, often under layers of rationalization, is happy about having these privileges. I get to live a life in which I don’t have to fight for recognition of my culture or my race, because my culture and race are the culture and race that are considered as the “main” one or the “right” one, or the one that doesn’t have to be named (in consequence to this conflict I purchased a few books about whiteness and cultural appropriation. I very much recommend reading “White Fragility”. It is uncomfortable as it confronts (us) Whites with (our) their own race that (we) they don’t usually have to consider. It is a great read if you manage to stay open and not feel personally attacked, but simply acknowledge that we are all children of our upbringing. Our task is to become aware of this and act against it wherever this upbringing perpetuates abuse and injustice).

Did I really commit an act of cultural appropriation with the tattoo? I don’t know. There might not be one single answer to it. There will be people who will say that I did and others who say that I didn't. From what I understand, there are a number of factors that turn an act into cultural appropriation, and you can definitely argue that I fulfilled some of them, while others I probably didn't qualify for. There are, too, different approaches to how Kali is seen in Hinduism. She can be an archetype for impermanence and truth. Or she can - as in Bengali tradition (as far as I’ve understood) be perceived as a living deity, as kin. Some Hindus wear mantras or symbols or even the pictures of deities on their skin. For others, this is blasphemy. Some people won’t mind Westerners using these deities on their own spiritual path. Some will.

It is complicated. We live in a globalized world. The food we eat is Italian, the rap music we listen to comes from an African-American background. We dance salsa or tango, do yoga or karate or capoeira. We read German philosophers and French politicians and use Roman law. But of course - it mostly goes one way: Western culture was imposed on non-Western cultures. And then the Westerners started picking stuff from those cultures. The process isn’t the same. And at the same time, globalization is a reality and it seems artificial to keep things closely put in boxes, relating to where things came from.

I think the important point is that Westerners/Whites become willing to look at these truths. I can’t go into an ego defense when confronted with these arguments. I want to stay open and actively assume responsibility. Not because I am guilty of what my ancestors did or because I am guilty for having been born into the culture I was born into. But because I benefit from the perpetuation of century old injustice, and I need to live my life in a way that acknowledges this fact. I cannot claim to be someone who holds justice as one of their primary values if I am unwilling to look at the injustices that I myself benefit from.

One way of assuming this responsibility is to acknowledge my friend’s hurt. Whether I agree with her in every nuance of this conflict or not doesn’t matter. Her hurt and anger are true and valid. I’m not going to defend myself against that. Still, I also get to set boundaries. I wish for friendships in which I have the chance to explain what I did and to not be shunned for making mistakes - objectively or subjectively. If this is not going to be possible with my friend, then maybe I also need to step away from this friendship. Not because I resent her or because I act in defense to her addressing my cultural blind spots, but because I desire a different conflict management.

Maybe Kali is already doing her work: She is cutting through my ego. The identity that I created for myself - the one of a culturally informed person, mostly free from racism, colonialism and classism - is challenged. For the next hours after reading my friend’s message, I spiral. I panic. I cry and I feel deeply, deeply ashamed. I feel like I never want to engage with another culture again, in fear of again doing something so horribly wrong in terms of this culture that it is bad enough to have a connection cut without any further communication.

My ego is at work: It sends me right into a “you’re the most horrible person ever” narrative. That, too, is ego. Because in that moment I am not able to be of service to anyone else. In my panic, in my breakdown reaction to having my identity challenged, I am so self-involved that I have no space for anything else. Instead of judging myself for being a European in a world that continues to exploit the Global South (ego narrative, self-pity), I need to see how I can try and be aware of my privilege without falling into self-hatred for circumstances (where I was born) that I didn't influence. I need to ask myself: Where does my responsibility end and where am I maybe not living up to it?

I spend most of the day panicking. I research if what I did (the tattoo) will make everyone in India hate me. I call Hindu friends. I get people’s opinions on the conflict (they vary). I pray. I write a tenth step. I contact my sponsor and my therapist because I feel close to annihilation. This is the really interesting part of this conflict: How able am I to love myself even though I am imperfect? How threatened does my right of existence feel when I slip up? And how much do I take in other people’s rage all the while knowing that it doesn’t exclusively have to do with me, but with a number of circumstances that build up over years and are charged with history? Do I take all of that personally?

I do a lot of emotional work this day. By the time that afternoon comes, I have stabilized enough to go out. I am dizzy, and nauseous, but I manage to go to a bookstore. I wander through the store aimlessly, still in a state of emergency. I feel dissociated, but books always calm me down. After a while I am able to sit down in the adjacent cafe and write a text about what just happened. This helps me reflect and find my middle. I am not bad because a friend turns away from me. But I am not as good as I want to think, either. Because good and bad are not the categories that we are measured in. I am human. Flawed. And loveable, anyway.

I go to a market where I try to buy some souvenirs, but everything that is sold there is very tacky. Instead, I go to a huge museum in the center of Colaba. I’m only half there, though. When something like this happens, I tend to go into a state of complete obsession. I feel that my autism makes things worse: Sensing that I broke and unwritten rule is almost unbearable for my system that so much needs to adhere to rules. I try to find ways to subsume my behavior under this unwritten rule and fail, again and again, because there is no clear answer. That wrecks my mind. I need a clear answer to feel safe again. This ambiguity is hard for me to carry.

At night, after dinner, I crash. Finally, I sleep, after having spent half the night awake obsessing over the conflict. I feel deeply unsettled. I had a quick chat with my friend, but she sustains her opinion, even though her terminology has softened a bit. I feel that the world is a minefield. Everything is changing. I’m going back to Germany tomorrow evening. Leaving India. With a tattoo on my arm that today feels like it brought me shame.

Somewhere deep inside me I know that this is just another teaching. One that I was deeply in need of. Because I need to become able to love myself in all my humanness. I am too unforgiving with myself. Always trying to be perfect won’t do it. Actually, my friend has given me a gift, no matter if our friendship continues after this or not.

Today is my mom's first death anniversary. It's been a year since I saw her drawing her last breath in that nursing bed in a care home in Berlin Lankwitz, surrounded by her closest relatives. I remember sitting on the terrace, inhaling the cold winter morning air, afterwards. I remember opening the window to let her soul out right after she died. I remember hugging my family, and then trying to close my mom's eyes while they kept springing open. We undressed her, bathed her, and put new clothes on her. We crossed her arms over her chest, and my aunt put a chocolate bar between her fingers. My mom loved chocolate, probably more than she loved me. We listened to Jimmy Hendrix' "Angel". My mom was called Angela, and Jimmy Hendrix was her favorite musician. We cried, and I asked for a minute alone with her. I remember how I whispered "Goodbye, my mommy", and cried hard, and kissed her forehead, and then left and didn't come back, not even in the evening when the rest of the family gathered in her room with her body once more. Instead, I went to Jiu-Jitsu. My half-sister, my father's daughter, had come to see me - a visit that had been long since planned - and she took care of me that weekend, being eleven years my minor. I couldn't have wished for better company.

I remember the days after my mom died - the grief wasn't as intense as it is now, sometimes. It was somehow covered by exhaustion, relief, and the feeling of everything being unreal. I cuddled the foster cat that I had in my place a lot, and I think it was really him who got me through that time. I couldn't simply stop taking care of someone, all of a sudden. Feeding the cat, cleaning his sandbox, playing with him and meowing back at him when he was asking for food possibly kept me mentally sane through the first weeks. When my friend, his owner, picked him up in mid-February, back from her travels, I felt suicidal for a moment. I remember being at a train station, thinking that I didn't want to live anymore. Luckily, I had meditated enough to be able to go into the role of an observer and say: Oh, interesting. You have nobody left to take care of and you want to stop existing? How about you now take care of yourself?

And that's what I did. I allowed myself time. I really took care of myself. Maybe for the first time in my life - being the daughter of two mentally ill or at least unstable people and the big sister of three and a half siblings as well as someone with the type of trauma that makes you pick "projects" as partners and friends - I really, fully concentrated on myself. It was so necessary. It was hard, too, because I didn't know how to do it and I constantly had to challenge my belief that I'm only worth something when I give myself to others. And then it got easier. And easier. Now, putting myself first comes almost natural.

Buy me a coffee?

Today is the start of a new chapter. Originally, after allowing myself more time to travel, step by step, I had planned to fly back to Europe today, as a symbolic act. But the flights were too expensive and not convenient at all. Still, today marks the completion of a circle. I get up and go to a temple. There, I buy flowers and bring them to Devi. I chose a Devi temple because she is the God that I feel most connected with. Devi is the female aspect of the absolute (Shakti). She is the universal mother. I'm sure if anyone manages to get a message to my mom, it's her. Surprisingly, I feel very light today. I don't cry. Instead, I take a number of selfies at the temple with groups of Indian visitors who ask me for a picture. I stroke a cat and give her some of my "Prasad" - a religious offering given to the devotees, often some baked goods or rice. I keep one of the flowers from the offering basket and put it in my backpack. I'll take it to the sea. My mom loved the sea.

After the temple visit I go to another temple that is close by, just because I'm curious. There, the overseer explains to me exactly how I have to worship. It's a Vishnu temple and I end up walking a couple of rounds around the centerpiece and then meditate in front of the depicted Gods.

I then take a scooter to the beach. I walk over the sand to the shore and place the rose from my backpack into the water. It's a bit sad - the beach is full of rubbish and the water is sluggish and grey. But it's the act that counts, I guess. I have a coffee at a café and then I take another scooter close to the main station where I have an appointment with a tattoo artist to get a number of tattoos (I will write about this in detail in tomorrow's entry because it is part of a bigger story, so I am not going to reveal exactly what I did).

The tattoo artists receives me together with his wife. At first, I am sceptical - the room is super small and they don't even have a lounger to lay down for the tattoos on my calves. Also, we haven't settled on the exact designs. But then, again, I am surprised: In a very short time the tattoo artists gives me what are probably the most professional tattoos I've ever gotten. The lines are impecable and in the days after the appointment they heal faster than any other tattoos I've gotten. He works quickly and the process is almost without pain. In the end, he charges me an amount that seems so ridiculously low that I try to force him to take some more money. We settle on a tip that doesn't seem to really show the appreciation that I have for his work.

Him and his wife even bring me lunch. A relative has a food stall close by and in the tiny tattoo studio we eat home made rice, daal, chapati and pickles. This is a gift, I think. After almost six hours I leave the tattoo studio tired, but happy. I see that a friend of mine who is Indian but lives in Germany has texted me back. I had asked her if she wanted me to bring her anything from home, as she grew up close to Mumbai. She lets me know what she would like to have and I tell her that today is my mom's death anniversary. She asks me how I feel and I answer, including a picture of one of the tattoos that I got in the answer. Then I go to buy the things she asked me for and have a quick dinner before I go home to sleep.

Everything goes well in the morning. I reach the airport early, drop my luggage and go to security. When I stand in the cabin where a woman scans my body with a small detector, she smiles at me and says: "You're from Amma's ashram."

It's not a question.

I break into a smile, too. I nod.

"How do you know?", I ask. "Do you also go there from time to time?"

"Yes", she replies. "Did you get Darshan?"

I nod again. She stretches out her hand and shakes it.

"Om namah shivaya", she says in the typical way of greeting at the ashram, as she ushers me out towards the gates.

My heart feels warm. Security personnel is never friendly. This encounter feels like a soft hug from Amma.

When I arrive in Mumbai after a 2.5 hour flight, I immediately look for a SIM-store. I find a little airport stall close to the exit. There, an Indian man who lives in America is trying to get a SIM.

"No success?", I ask, and he sighs.

"It's so difficult", he murmurs, and I nod. "I know."

He leaves without a SIM about five minutes later because his American phone has some blocker installed that doesn't allow for a foreign SIM. I am discouraged, but I stay. And it works. Within five minutes I have a working SIM and I am elated. I don't understand why things can be so easy at times while impossible at other times, but I frankly don't have to understand now. This is the last SIM I'll need in India for a while, and I'll make sure to have a phone that supports e-SIMs before I come back the next time.

Buy me a coffee?

I get a cab into the city and am surprised that the ride will only take about 45 minutes. I remembered Mumbai as a shithole. When I arrived here in the middle of the night in March 2011, at 19 years of age, with my boyfriend at the time, leaving Europe for the first time in my life, I was overwhelmed. So was J., my boyfriend. In fact, he was so overwhelmed that he didn't really want to leave the hotel for three days, while I was eager to explore everything. The tables turned when we arrived in Goa after a nightmarish bus ride through eight hours of serpentines that I exclusively spent vomiting until the driver let me know that they were "out of vomit bags". Suddenly, J. who had been disinfecting everything in our first hotel room with disinfectant he had brought from Europe (really) got used to India. He got so used to it that when we had coin-sized bed bugs in our bed in one place and I refused to sleep in it, he remarked: "Don't make such a fuss. It's India."

Today, we're friends. We broke up around ten years ago, after a six year-long relationship. As I stroll through Mumbai after dropping my things in my hotel, I text him. I know he has spent six months living in Delhi for work a few years ago.

"Did you ever come back to Mumbai?", I ask him. "It's a really beautiful city."

Because it is. I am stunned. The skyline is amazing, even though covered by a veil of smog at all time. The old, impressive buildings remind of Buenos Aires or Paris. I had expected horrible traffic, and am surprised that it's quite orderly. For sure I have also gotten used to India over the last months and maybe therefore no longer find certain things remarkable, but I think mainly the city has simply changed A LOT over the last fifteen years. Of course it has. India has had an economic growth of over six percent in 2024/2025 and is in the top ten of the strongest economies worldwide.

In the afternoon, Paolo texts me. Tomorrow will be my mom's first death anniversary. The year after my mom died will officially end tomorrow (though the blog will continue in this form until the 13th of January, and then change format). He asks me how I feel about it and I start bawling. I can't stop crying for quite a while. I can't believe it's been a year. Again and again, I see the moment she took her last breath in front of my eyes. It's still so … there. And yet, so much has happened since then. I've grown so much. Grieved so much. Laughed so much. I wish I could share all that with her. I miss her every single day, and I will for the rest of my life. But also, my life continues, and it's a good life. I wouldn't swap it for anything.

At night, I go to Leopold's. Leopold's is a bar/restaurant in Colaba, one of the hippest areas in Mumbai. It's an important setting in my favorite novel "Shantaram", written by Gregory David Roberts. It's based on his own life story: Being held in an Australian high-security prison he escaped to India and got involved in organized crime in Mumbai. It's a poetic love story. A story of becoming. A story of facing our darkest demons, and of how good and bad are never really that far from each other. It's a love declaration to India, and especially to Mumbai.

I am thrilled to be sitting at a table in this historical café (it was founded in 1871), reaching the end of my trip where I began travelling fifteen years ago. It feels like coming full circle.

A waiter asks if a young woman can sit at my table as the place is packed. I nod, and she sits down. We soon start talking. Amby is only nineteen and studies economics in Mumbai. She is incredibly awake and asks me questions that are so straightforward that I start laughing a couple of times. We chat for an hour and a half, munching on our meals, and I am touched by her curiosity and open-mindedness.

Eventually, I'm getting tired. I hug Amby and share my contact with her. She texts me later, giving me some advice for a good Mumbai visit. What a beautiful and unexpected encounter I think as I make my way back to my hotel on the back of a scooter through the soft breeze of Mumbai's nightly streets.

I have a lot to do today before I leave to Trivandrum in the afternoon. Before breakfast, I drop by the cowshed to say goodbye to the cows. I hug them and spot my white kurta with cowshit. I whisper to them that I'll be back, and it feels strange to leave this place without knowing when that will be. I hope soon, but life happens, and often things that seem very important in one moment are less of a priority in the next.

After my visit at the cowshed I go to N.s place. I'm leaving her the saree I wore for my Arati with Amma in September. I've given this a lot of thought as it is a very symbolic object. But if I have learned one thing over the last years is that we're not supposed to hold on: neither to material nor to immaterial stuff. I want to cultivate an ability to let go, instead. The saree would only be sitting in my cupboard in Germany. Here, N. can make beautiful curtains for the windows of her new apartment from it. She gives me a copy of the book she wrote and I am grateful for this beautiful new connection. We have breakfast together and then I go back to my room to pack my things and clean.

Buy me a coffee?

S. drops by and helps me to carry some things that I won't take back home with me to a donation box close to the Western Café. Then I say goodbye to her, too. For lunch, I meet Violeta and we talk until Amma comes to the main hall for meditation. I go to the Kali temple to meditate there as it is quieter.

After the meditation I drop my backpacks at the luggage deposit at the International Office and go to the internet café where I meet G. We talk about the possible job with the Indian engineer and what the next steps will be. I'm open to give it a try, without investing too much of my time. But I believe that if we stay open and aligned with our values and intuition, good opportunties sometimes find us where we do not expect them.

At 16.30 I meet with the two other travellers that will be sharing the cab to Trivandrum with me. We get in the car and start driving. The journey is supposed to take around 2.5 hours, but it takes four. I get very impatient after a while, having no option to check where we are and how much longer it's going to take as I can't connect to the internet. First, we drop off the man at Terminal 1 at the airport. Then we drop off the woman - a very sweet Japanese lady - at Terminal 2 which is located five kilometers from Terminal 1. After that, the driver asks me where my hotel is. I show him the address. He stops the car at the sidewalk and asks a group of men for directions. I had feared this might happen. The men give him some instructions and then tell me that I should put the address in Google Maps.

"No internet", I shrug, and ask the driver if I can put the address in his phone. He gives me a cryptic response and starts driving. We drive for about half an hour and he seems to know where he is going. But then he suddenly stops, looking around.

"Watch hotel", he says, and I look around, too, but there are so many buildings, and I have no idea if we're even in the right area.

"Can we look it up on your phone?", I ask again, and again I get no answer.

"Do you have internet?", I try another time, but somehow he manages to say neither yes nor no.

He opens the door and steps out onto the street. I know what will happen now. He will say the name of the hotel - that he can't remember nor pronounce, I've heard him try a few times now - and ask random people for directions. Those people will point vaguely into different directions or give him detailed descriptions on how to reach the place, and we will drive and stop and drive and stop, until infinity. I've been in India for a while now, and in my experience this is how it works.

I want to avoid that. I take a screenshot of the hotel address and give it to my driver before he can walk away. He stands on the street for a while, my phone in my hand, without doing anything. Then he crosses the street and talks to another cab driver for a while. When he comes back, he seems to have gotten directions. And in fact, we drive another two minutes and we spot the hotel. I am relieved. It's getting late, I haven't eaten and tomorrow I need to get up early for my flight to Mumbai.

When I reach my hotel room, I realise they didn't give me the WiFi password at reception. Also, I can't find the food menu. I'm frustrated and tired. Sometimes things in India go so smooth when you expect the worst, and sometimes they pose a major challenge when you think it'll be easy. It is what it is, I think, and finally manage to order a quick dinner. Then I go to bed. Tomorrow I'll reach the last stop of my nine month trip: Mumbai. The city where I first stepped onto Indian soil fifteen years ago.

I get up early to join the silent retreat. We gather in a breakfast hall where we have tea and listen to the introductions for the day. About fifty people have joined. Once the instructions have ended, we all walk to the yoga hall where we start the day with a forty minute meditation. I struggle to find a position where my tailbone doesn't hurt too much to relax, but eventually I manage. My head is loud. It starts spitting out negative thoughts about myself and everybody else as soon as I enter into meditation (or what is supposed to be meditation).

At the end of the first forty minutes I am relieved that the meditation is over. It's followed by an hour of yoga, and as always I find it way easier to move my body than to sit still. After yoga, we all have breakfast in silence. My head doesn't stop: I am surprised by the amount of negative thoughts that pop up in my brain - judgement concerning others and myself. That person looks like they're full of themselves. That one has an ugly haircut. I'm way too restless, and after years of trying to meditate I'm still not able to do it. The silence fortifies the effect of these thoughts. There is no escape - no books to read, no phone screen to look at to get away from my own mind.

The next session of sitting is just as intense. I am shocked by how destructive many of my thoughts are. I usually perceive myself as quite a positive person, but in silence all the negativity comes out. I try to simply be with it. I believe that if we sit in meditation long enough, these types of thoughts will consume themselves - they will burn up and disappear. But first, we need to allow them to make some smoke without engaging with them too much.

The negative thoughts are interrupted by moments of clarity. I started having those a while ago - moments, when the world suddenly becomes sharp and silent. It's like a veil being removed that usually lies over "reality". I believe those are moments of real meditation. They never last more than a couple of seconds, but the beauty and peace I experience in those moments is incomparable to anything else. The more I meditate, the more frequent they become.

We alternate sitting and walking meditation. I like the walking meditation a lot, as it's less static. At the same time, it's easier to get distracted as I walk with my eyes open. The sitting sessions are intense, but after a couple of them I feel that my mind is starting to settle. The chatter of my thoughts quiets down.

It pipes back up during lunch break, though. I'm going back to my room, and it's really weird not to "do" anything: I'm not supposed to read, nor use my phone, nor talk to anyone or listen to a podcast. I'm simply with myself. My spirit starts grasping for something: I intensely miss Paolo and fantasize about our next meeting, which will hopefully take place in February in Berlin. I understand that my mind is desperately trying to hold on to something. I manage to stay with this feeling of lack and restlessness until I join the course again. In the afternoon, we do another two sessions of sitting and walking and some more yoga, and then we end the day. Even though it was challenging, I'm glad I did it. I decide that I will make silence a part of my routine: The hour after getting up, until after I have meditated, done my morning stretching, said my mantra and prepared my breakfast I will not have a look at my phone or interact with anyone in any way. I want to get used to this silence. I want these negative thoughts to consume themselves until there is real peace in my mind.

After the end of the retreat I go to the WiFi café to check my messages. There, I meet G., the elderly Italian man. He offers me a job as a translator as he is thinking of doing some business with an Indian engineer he met around the ashram. I am carefully interested - often enough nothing comes of these things, but I'm willing to give it a try and to invest an hour or two. Especially because translating is one of my favorite things to do. I sit with the Indian engineer and G. for a while, translating back and forth between English and Italian, and volunteer to function as an intermediary, hoping that this might grow into a mandate once I am back in Berlin and opening my law firm.

In the evening, I go for Darshan. This time, Amma looks at me, and my heart jumps with joy. When I walk off the stage I am flooded by the love I feel for this place. My soul aches with the pain of parting, but at the same time I know it is the right thing to do.

I want to work with the cows in the morning, but when my alarm rings, I simply can't get up. My tailbone hurts a lot, and working in the cowshed wouldn't help. I turn off my alarm and sleep for another two hours. When I finally manage to get up, I go for breakfast, again alone. I'm liking this routine. This way, I think, I could stay much longer in the Ashram. I'm regretting my decision to come only for a week a little, now. I was thinking anything longer than a week would be overwhelming, but now that I've found my rhythm, I'd love to stay more.

After breakfast I go to the internet café. I need to check some things. My taxi ride (I'm going to share with another person from the ashram) for the 8th has been confirmed. But my hotel booking hasn't. I sigh. This is the second hotel booking that doesn't work. The first hotel in Trivandrum cancelled because they don't host foreigners. This hotel, now, wants me to pay upfront, but doesn't open any possibility for payment. I call them through WhatsApp and they let me know that they don't accept any payments from foreign accounts, nor do they accept PayPal or Wise. How is this so complicated?

I remember that the last time that I was about to leave the Ashram, two of my flight bookings didn't work, the money being reimbursed after I thought I had closed the deal. Is this some mystical thing Amma does? Like, does she not want me to leave? Do I have to be extra determined to leave? I book another hotel, and this time it works. I know that I'm doing the right thing by leaving, even though my heart would like to stay here for a bit. My heart wants many things - it also wants to go back to Berlin and start a new chapter, and I know that I can - and will - come back here. For now, my task is in Germany.

From the café I go to the village. I find an ayurvedic pharmacy where I try to buy the nose drops they gave me at the Panchakarma center, but the pharmacy doesn't have them. I buy eye drops against my allergy and some cream for my psoriasis and then, on my way back, I stop at a mala stall and buy some souvenirs for friends and a beautiful gemstone mala that shimmers in pink, purple and blue for myself. All the while, I'm reciting my mantra in my head. I have found my mantra counter somewhere in my luggage and put it on. It makes all the difference: I've already recited my mantra more than 1.500 times today, and I'm really getting into it. I always thought that mantra recitation might work for me, but then I always found excuses not to do it. The mantra counter on my left hand gives me a feeling of gratification when I look at the ever rising number on the little screen. The mantra becomes automatic and my thoughts are wandering a little bit less than usual. This might be something I'd like to examine further.

I go back to my room to write and do some yoga before I go to lunch. After lunch, I get ready to work with the cows. It's my last shift. I will miss them a lot. The soothing effect working with these animals has on my soul is incredible. Also, the cows have gotten used to me again. One of the babys comes running towards me whenever I call him and follows me around through the shed. A couple of others start licking my hair and arms whenever I stand close to them, as if they had accepted me as one of their own. I'm bathed in cow saliva, but I'm happy. I have a chat with Jayshree and inform her that I'm almost leaving already.

"Short time", she says, in her broken English, and so much warmth emanates from her eyes that I want to hug her.

I nod, and tell her that it's time for me to go home, see my family. She understands.

After my shift I go to the café again and call Paolo. We have a long, beautiful talk, and I hope that he'll come and visit me in Berlin soon, once I'm back. G., an elderly Italian man that I often chat with, sits down next to me.

"Do you want to come for a beer in a bar in the village", he asks and winks at me, after letting me know that he has an "indecent offer" to make. I think about it and am tempted. I love the stories he tells, and the idea of sitting in a bar in an Indian village with two Italian men in their eighties somehow gets me. But the bar isn't close and tomorrow the silent retreat I registered for starts at six in the morning. I decline the offer and instead go for dinner and then stay in the main hall for Bhajans for a bit, reading my book. I feel good. I'm content, being by myself so much, somehow being part of the whole but without having to interact too much. That's how I like things best.

After the Bhajans, I buy a mango juice in the Indian Canteen and then go to meditate in front of the Kali statue in the Kali Temple before I go back to my room where I do yin yoga and keep reading until I'm tired.

I wake up in time for the meditation in the Kali Temple. I get ready and sit in the temple. For a couple of minutes I'm fine there, until I can no longer block out the cacophony of coughing and sneezing. Group meditations are simply not my thing, and that's okay. I'm happy that I'm open to give it a try now and then, though. On my way down the temple stairs I spot my friend A. She is in her seventies and an impressive woman. I run to hug her, and she invites me to drop by the tailor studio to have a chat with her.

Buy me a coffee?

From the meditation I go to breakfast. I mostly sit alone these days, and enjoy eating in silence and without listening to anything or reading stuff on my phone. I finally remember to pray before eating. It's something that I've looked down at for a long time, but eventually I understood how small habits can change your entire attitude one day at a time. It clicked for me when I started doing gratitude lists when I first joined A.A. more than four years ago. In the beginning, I could hardly think of anything to be grateful for except for having a roof over my head and a relatively healthy body (which is a whole lot, I now realize). Today, gratitude is one of my predominant feelings. I feel grateful multiple times a day, sometimes so much that it drives me to tears. I have cultivated this feeling through the habit of reflecting on what I am grateful for every day until it has become automatic. These seemingly meaningless little things can change your entire life.

After breakfast, I return to my room to write and work for a bit. I need to put my finances in order and keep my anxiety in check. I'm feeling better today, though. Being somewhat withdrawn in the ashram and focusing on my spiritual practices is grounding and probably just what I needed before travelling back to Berlin. When I need a break from sitting, I decide to take the trash down. It's a whole thing, here. First, I need to take the elevator to the ground level, then make my way to the trash deposit and then very meticulously divide all the trash that I've put in one big plastic container. At Amma's Ashram, dividing trash is taken very seriously, just as any other environment related actions. It is divided in hair, dust, soft and hard plastic, food waste, sharp objects, glass, paper and a couple of other things.

On my way to the trash bins I meet B., an elderly man that was sitting next to me in the Darshan line. He asks me how my Darshan was yesterday, and we stop to chat. He tells me that his wife has passed away three months ago and about how Amma is allowing him to grieve here. I share about my mom. B. uses a couple of terms that ring a bell for me. "Are you a fellow?", I ask him, and he nods. It turns out he's been visiting the same 12-step programs that I visit. This is something I love about 12-step programs: They are compatible with any type of spiritual tradition. I don't have to choose between Bhakti Yoga (worshipping a guru) or Buddhism or anything else that catches my attention and my 12-step path. It simply beautifully combines.

As if meeting a fellow wasn't enough, I find "As Bill Sees It" on a table of giveaway books. Lately, I have reconnected to the program, and it feels like a greeting or a loving reminder by Amma, saying: It's alright. You belong here with that. Anyhow, I have observed people here and I get a feeling that many of them come here in recovery: I'm surely in good company and by far not the only addict who finds relief and recovery from addiction who has come to stay with Amma. Of course, I think. Because who are the people who set out onto a spiritual path (usually, of course there are others, too)? Often it's the tormented ones, those that have looked deep into the human abyss, that start their quest for something transcendental.

I do some yoga in my room and go to the internet café where I have a long chat with G., a funny Italian man in his seventies that always makes me laugh with his direct way of saying things. We speak about the people in the ashram, about how the behaviours that trigger us in them say something about ourselves. When I look at the clock I'm shocked to find that it's already time for me to go to seva.

I quickly put on my seva clothes and go to the cows. Whenever I feel overwhelmed by the busyness of the ashram, here is where I find calm. Working with the cows grounds me immediately. I clean their fodder buckets, fill them with food, hand them to the cows, and then start cleaning the shed. I have chay with Jayshree and a man named Kali who works here now. He doesn't speak English, but is from Orissa, so I the few crumbs of Hindi that I speak and somehow we manage to have a friendly chat, helped by Jayshree who speaks a bit of everything.

After seva, I wash my clothes and shower, and then I set out to find the Ashram pharmacy because I am allergic to something around here and my eyes are constantly itchy. Also, I am having a psoriasis outbreak and treating it with ayurvedic oils doesn't seem to be enough. It's interesting how everything gets stirred up here, even on a physical level. Even my tailbone hurts more than the last days. The first time I came here has been like a deep cleansing, too.

I don't find the pharmacy, which is hidden somewhere between the outskirts of the ashram and the hospital and probably closed at this time of day anyway, but instead I end up taking a walk through the ashram and the surrounding village. I stop at the beach to look at the sunset, and then I meet my friends S. and G. at the Indian canteen. We eat together and when both get up to pursue their business, I go back to my room. I do yin yoga and meditate for a while, and then I read until I am tired enough to sleep. Not having a phone does wonders, I think. I should do this more, maybe establish certain hours a day where I completely switch off the internet. It takes a couple of days for the mind to settle, but now I suddenly find myself doing things that otherwise I always postpone for the instant gratification of using my phone. I am happier with how things are now. I wish to be able to maintain that, at least some of it.

I wake up just in time to go for breakfast. My friend N., the Chilean woman I had breakfast with yesterday, has invited me to the inauguration of her flat. I pass by the Western Canteen and buy breakfast and a coffee, and then I walk past the hospital, cross the little street that leads to the newer part of the Ashram and find my way up a narrow building to N.s apartment. She opens the door, dressed all in white, as people here do. I'm the first to arrive. Slowly, more people pour into the tiny flat. We sit on cushions on the floor as N. doesn't have any furniture yet. We all spread the things we brought for breakfast on plates on the floor and then N. prays and some mantras are sung and we eat together.

After breakfast, I do some shopping. I want to bring some souvenirs from the ashram and also get some things for myself that can only be bought here. I aquire some books from Amma and a couple of shawls and jewelry that I like from Amma's gift shop and Ram's bazaar, the second hand store. Then I carry my purchases back to my room and sit down to write. This time, staying with Amma, I feel I have matured. I am no longer floating as aimlessly through the ashram as I did last time, trying to take it all in. That was great for a first stay. Now I am more determined, more towards the inside. I still am interested in people, of course, but I no longer let myself be carried away by every opportunity to interact.

In the end, not having a SIM card turns out to be a blessing (as things do). It takes away the need to control things - simply because I can't. Had I gotten a SIM, I would have planned every minute of this stay, trying to meet all the people I know and distracting myself from the feelings and fears that come up while I'm here. Now, I am magically relieved of the possibility to try and control (it always just stays at an attempt - I don't have any control) what happens. Everything is up to chance. I will meet whoever I am supposed to meet here, and the rest - I can just let it go. This makes space for whatever I am supposed to experience and look into during my time at the ashram.

I go to the Western Canteen for lunch. On my way back to my room I run into my friend P. I had texted her from the café with the WiFi, but she still hadn't gotten back to me. I had just been thinking of her, when I spot her in front of the Kali Temple. We hug and quickly exchange news. Then we decide to meet up for dinner at 6. I go back to my room and rest for a while. A lot of thoughts run through my head. My mind is busy, with excitement, joy and organisation. I catch myself mentally going through my wardrobe at home, wanting to get rid of everything I don't need anymore, and planning meticulously when and where to sell the stuff that I sorted out. This, in other words, is insanity. This is why I meditate and why I refuse to make my spiritual practice anything but my first priority. Because this is what my mind does in its default mode: I am thousands of kilometers away from home, going through an imaginary wardrobe to sort out clothes that I mostly bought second hand for less than a tenner and planning how to sell them. Instead of taking a nap and resting for the day ahead. Instead of being present. It's so bizarre, when you really think of it, that it makes me laugh.

My seva frees me of the self-imposed suffering of planning everything that I will do after my return to Germany. I put on my seva clothes and go to the cowshed. There I clean buckets from cowshit and hay, fill them with food for milking and non-milking cows, give the buckets to the animals that almost tear them out of my hands, discipline a couple of younger cows that try to steal the food of their mates and finally, when everyone has finished their meals, fill the buckets with water and clean some cow dung from the floor.

In between my tasks, I stop to hug and stroke the cows, whispering in their ears and kissing their foreheads. Karvana, one of my favorite cows, recognises me when I go to him. He steps into the biggest embrace. He is a particularly gentle cow and is known for "hugging" people. When you kneel down in front of him, he steps in really close and rests his head against your body. Today he stays with me longer than ever before. A couple of other cows also place their heads in my arms, resting them there, or let me scratch the skin under their chins. Rama, who used to horn me whenever he got a chance to, is unusually friendly to me and walks towards me as soon as he hears my voice. My heart is overflowing with love for these animals and I forget every worry, every bit of overwhelm that I'm feeling.

After my seva, I take a long shower and wash the cow dung out of my clothes. Then I go back to the WiFi place and call Paolo. We talk for about an hour and afterwards I walk over to the Western Canteen to meet my friend P. We have a lovely dinner until the Bhajans start. Then we both leave the main hall - P. goes to meet another friend and I retreat back to my room. I really want to try and get Darshan tonight, but I understand now that this means I need to rest before.

I do yin yoga in my room and finish the book by Elizabeth Gilbert. Then I lay on my bed, eyes closed, for a while, until I sense that the Bhajans should soon be over. I take the elevator down again - I'm on the 13th floor and it is quite a journey. Amma is singing the last Bhajan for the evening, and then the Arati begins, and with it, the chaos. People push their way through the masses to get in line for Darshan. They swing chairs into a line, stepping on each other's toes, and one woman almost falls over as three people push her forward. I sit down on a chair and glare at everyone who gets too close. I'm always baffled by the impatience of people here, and I can see the same confusion and annoyance that I feel displayed on the faces of a couple of other people.

It turns out that the people on the chairs all already have a token for Darshan. I have to leave my chair and stand in line to get one. Only then am I allowed to sit in line and wait until it's my turn to go on stage. This place teaches me to surrender. In all the chaos, you need to be determined in what you want to achieve. But at the same time, you need to be flexible. You need to get a feeling for what is right, more than trying to control things with your thinking mind. If you try to do that here, you will LOSE YOUR MIND, a consequence of trying to use it in a place that isn't governed by the mind, but by something way more powerful and mystical.

As I wait in line, I'm deeply annoyed. I get angry with people, with their impatience, their lack of awareness and care for each other, their urgency to come first and be served first. This is an ashram, for God's sake, I think. Shouldn't people be more spiritual? I sit on my chair, sulking very spiritually myself.

As soon as I step onto the stage and am ushered into a line of chairs there to wait for Darshan by Amma, my experience changes. I see Amma hugging people who are crying, smiling and glowing with love for their Guru, and my annoyance at humanity turns into love and forgiveness. All this is holy, I think, remembering that someone once told me that Amma keeps those closest to her who need her the most, which explains why a lot of emotions boil up in the Ashram. It all belongs, I think, suddenly weirdly reconciled with everything that just made me feel so irritable just a minute ago. All this - the dark depths of humanity, our most gruesome feelings and actions - all this is holy, too, and it belongs.

Then, as I proceed to get closer to Amma, seat by seat, I think: It really does feel like home. Because - a real home is characterized by you feeling love for it, and at the same time the people in your home being able to drive you out of your mind. Or as Ram Dass said: If you think you're enlightened, go and spend a week with your family. This is how I feel about this place: I love it. And I can't stand some of its characteristics most of the time.

And then again, as I get quite close to Amma, something changes again: Suddenly I realise that I am all of what I criticize: I am impatient with people. Maybe I don't push them aside to get my way, but I am impatient with their impatience. I tut and I roll my eyes and I mutter my thoughts under my breath, and I think I am better than them. I am arrogant. I sometimes think that I know more about the spiritual process than them, having no idea where they are coming from. I am easily angered, and I am constantly irritable. Most of all, I'm judgmental.

And there I have it - what we do in A.A. and other twelve-step programs through the 4th and 5th step: A (possibly not conclusive) list of my character defects, mirrored right back to me through this place. I sigh with relief, because as much as it might not be nice to learn certain truths about yourself, it most certainly is liberating. The last five minutes before going for Darshan I turn this list into a prayer: Please strip away everything that is no longer needed in my life. Please help me grow into my purpose.

Then I get up, and Amma hugs me, and very little happens. I don't cry and I am not suddenly filled with unconditional love or total surrender. But I also don't expect to be. This place works in mysterious ways, and for today, I've already had my miracle.

After Darshan, I head straight back to my room and read a little before I fall asleep.

I wake up after a night of good rest. It's 5.45, and for a moment I fight the idea to turn around again and sleep for another hour just out of laziness, but I'm not really tired anymore. So I get up and join the morning Pooja at the small temple in Amma's birth house. I thought it started at six, but when I arrive at short past six the Pooja is almost over. I got the times mixed up. It's fine anyway, because my tailbone still hurts quite a lot and long sitting is not an option. I just wanted to feel the atmosphere and the fifteen minutes that the Pooja still lasts after I arrive are enough. It is so good to be back. My heart is jumping with joy.

After the Pooja, I make my way to the cowshed where I worked in September and October. I wave at Jayshree when I spot her, busy cleaning the cowshed as always. "Aah", she exclaims. "You okay?" I walk up to her and hug her tiny, strong frame.

"Can I say hi to the cows?", I ask.

"Of course", she nods and is off again to tend to the animals. I love how little fuss people make about me being back. It feels like I've just walked back over the doorstep after going out for a short walk. It makes me feel home - like: I belong here. I can always come here. I'm not a guest here anymore, as when I first arrived, but I now have my place in the ashram and it will be here, waiting for me, even when I don't come for a long time. I've needed a home, a place to always go back to, after I lost mine. My grandmother had an old house in a village in the hills of Austria. The whole family used to gather there, and because me and my mom moved so many times that I never really developed a feeling of "home" with any of the flats and houses I lived in, that was home. That was the never changing, always available place. When my grandmother died in 2018, it had to be sold. We all miss the place. Then my stepfather got sick and even the home of my parents that they had inhabitated for only a couple of years was lost. We gave it back to the landlord. And then of course my mom died and there is no one left in the city where I was born and grew up for the first 18 years of my life. Only now I that everything is gone I realize that it is important to have a place to come back to. Amma has given me that place. Never in a thousand years had I imagined that this type of home would happen to be in India.

I say hello to the cows. Kaveri rubs her head against me as soon as I step close to her. There are a few new babys, and of course Sudagar who was born during my last stay here. He grew so much. He seems to recognize me and rests his head in my arms for a long time. I kiss him on the forehead and hug him and learn that now he has a new name that I immediately forget. My friend Sameera, who also works in the cowshed, arrives and jumps with joy when she sees me. We hug a couple of times and my heart almost bursts with gratitude for this place.

After my visit to the cowshed, I buy a coffee and take it to the beach. I walk past the building where I lived during my first stay. Then I sit on one of the plastic chairs that stand scattered all along the beach and meditate. I look out at the sea and breathe.

At eight, I join the meditation in the Kali Temple. I don't like group meditations very much because I get distracted by the sounds around me: Somebody is always sneezing, coughing or moving in their seat. I still manage to stay about twenty minutes, though, and when I leave the temple I feel that I've given it my best, and that is what counts.

I go to the Western Canteen to get breakfast and meet with Violeta. She is late and I have breakfast with a Chilean woman that I met during my last stay, instead. I'm surprised by how many people I know. It really feels like I've been gone only for a short while. N. invites me to join an inauguration breakfast at her flat tomorrow - she just bought an apartment at the ashram.

"I'll be there", I say when she gets up to go to Seva. Violeta arrives and we chat while she has breakfast. Afterwards, I go to the Kali Temple again where I register for a one day long silent retreat just before my flight to Mumbai. It seems like the right way to end my stay here and prepare for going back to Europe. I report my taxi driver at the International Office. Yesterday's experience is still bothering me and I'm not going to let it slip. I also get my passport back and then embark on the adventure of trying to get another SIM card in India.

A driver takes me to Kayamkulam, a city about 15 kilometers from Amritapuri. I was told that there is an Airtel office there where they give out tourist SIMs. After an half an hour ride my driver drops me in front of the office. Maybe this isn't going to be as bad as I thought, I think. I enter the office and ask if they have tourist SIMs. The two women in the office both shake their heads.

"You have to go to Karunagapally. There, they do tourist SIMs."

"Where is that?", I ask.

"It's about 15 km from here", one of the women answers.

"Isn't there any closer place?", I ask, having told my driver that he could leave after I saw that the office was open.

"You can try Jio office", say the women.

I ask them to write down both the name of the Jio office and the name of the city where the other Airtel office is located. After all, all the names are in Malayalam and it's impossible for me to remember them. Without internet and Google Maps I'm completely lost and at the mercy of what people tell me.

I manage to stop another tuk-tuk that agrees to take me to the Jio office. It shouldn't be more than a five minute drive. But when we get to the place where the office used to be, there is a closed store with a sign reading "to let". "Changed address", my driver remarks correctly. I'm already starting to feel like in one of Kafka's novels where nothing ever gets you anywhere and you're completely powerless over all bureaucratic circumstances, but fully aware that you will lose the rest of your life and maybe another couple of lifetimes to frustrating and useless procedures.

My driver is very friendly though and makes a call to the number on the "to let"-sign. The person on the other end of the line tells him where the Jio office moved to and he takes me there. This time, I tell my driver to wait. I might have to go to that other city 15 km away, and I'm lucky enough to have found a driver who speaks some English and doesn't try to rip me off completely when it comes to the price for the ride.

I walk the stairs to the office, and ask the guy at the reception if they sell SIM cards. He looks like a personified question mark and I already know that I'll have no luck here, either. And I'm right. He sends me away again.

"Let's go to Karunagapally", I tell my driver, and he proceeds to take me another 40 minutes through the curvy street of the South of Kerala, honking loudly on all given occasions (and also on all non-given occasions). When we reach the city, we stop to ask somebody for the Airtel office. Finally, we find it. I'm tired and sweaty and thirsty. I enter the office, and ask if they sell SIMs to tourists. I'm asked to sit and wait, but I'm not sure if that's a yes or a no. I need to inform my driver if he is supposed to wait for me.

Another 15 minutes later the woman who appears to be in charge of things here asks for my passport. My driver comes to sit inside the store and wait with me. We fill in all the information that needs to be given for the form, and my tuk-tuk driver volunteers to be my Indian contact. The woman in charge has problem with the English spelling and so I ask to type my information directly into the cracked screen of the phone she works with. She takes a picture of me, and then we wait. For a long time. I read my book and I almost forget what I'm waiting for.

Finally, the woman asks: "Name of your father?"

"Wait", I say. "Was it declined? Are we filling in all the information again?"

The woman nods. I shake my head.

"No more", I say. "One try. If declined, no more."

I have surrendered already. No SIM for me, then. I'll try to get one when I reach Mumbai, or I'll find a way to travel India without a SIM. But I've had it. I don't want to waste my days at the ashram filling in the ever-same information into the ever-same form just to get my application declined again and again for no apparent reason.

"Let's go to Amritapuri", I tell my driver, who I think is happy to have found such a far-travelling client today. I pay him double the price when he drops me at the ashram. After all, he has waited at the store with me for about an hour.

I walk straight to the café with the WiFi right outside the ashram and send a few messages to friends, informing them that I won't have any internet while I'm at the ashram. Then I go to the Indian Canteen and eat Parotta with chickpea curry and keep reading the book by Elizabeth Gilbert. I read the part where her partner, Rayya Elias, dies of cancer, and suddenly I am blown away by the fact that it's been almost a year since my mom died. I go to my room and cry and write a poem about that. Amma has already started working on me, again. I feel more and more grief coming up, and I'm in tears multiple times over the course of the day. It's incredible how the energy works here. Everything comes out. I accept it, this last cleansing before I go back to Europe and start a new chapter. Probably it's good that I couldn't get a SIM. This way, I can't distract myself as easily from all that washes to the surface while I'm here.

In the evening, I join the Bhajans. I sit in the very front, looking at Amma. After about half an hour, I need a break from sitting, and also, I'm hungry. I go back to the Indian Canteen, the only place that is open at this time, and get some greasy, horrible snacks because there is nothing else available. I decide to rest in my room until the Bhajans end, and then go for Darshan. But once I lock the door to my room I know that this won't happen. It's been a long and intense day. As much as I would love to go for Darshan, I need to rest. I believe that there are different tasks for all of us at the Ashram. It's not always about "getting as much out of it" as possible. Sometimes, it's about looking at what's inside, and just being here, with all that is. Actually, I pretty much believe, it's about that in most cases.