Bummer in Berlin, so What's Next?

 Last night I didn’t make it past the door guy at a very famous club in Berlin. Being a person very sensitive to rejection, I was gutted. I’m still upset about it, to be honest. Nothing haunts me more than being reminded of the ways I don’t fit into this world. Feeling isolated, denied entry to human connection and authentic and fulfilling relationships was the main reason for my suicide attempt last year, withdrawing from drugs coming in second. It’s interesting that I chose to spend a month in Europe solo. Authentic human connection is something that often escapes a solo traveler. Besides the language barrier, there’s cultural differences and unfamiliar food and places to stay in that are not my own. Standing in front of that incredibly intimidating door guy at Berghain, so timid and unsure of myself in my tiny black dress, asking to be accepted into a place that is legendary in the techno community around the world, felt in many ways like being confronted by all the fears I’ve held onto while taking planes to new places. Fear of not being welcomed as a tourist. Fear of not being able to order in a restaurant. Fear I won’t know what to wear or how to act. Fear I won’t fill my days with the things I should be doing. It’s terrifying landing in a new country and being unsure of what’s acceptable and what isn’t. I had to question how I dress, what I say, what language I can speak in, English and Spanish being the only two that I know. All that anxiety manifests itself when trying to get into a club in Berlin. The nightlife there is notorious for not being welcoming to any old visitor who wants to just wander inside. You have to come correct, and it’s hard to know how to do that when you don’t even know how to pronounce the neighborhood you’re staying in! I fucking crumbled when it was finally my turn to have my vibes assessed before entering Berghain. My heart was beating so hard I’m sure I looked like a scared little deer up there. I didn’t even answer when he asked if I was there alone, I just nodded anxiously. I walked away with my head down when he said “nein.” Another story to tell, I guess. 

Techno is the music I’ve built the fourth chapter of my life around. I like the beat and I like to dance, but more than that I like the way it makes me feel like I belong. I show up to the clubs in New York with very little clothing on and can dance until the sun comes up and that act of bravery is recognized and celebrated by everyone else who’s sharing the club with me. Dancing while practically naked is healing. I go out because in the night surrounded by fog and red lights I get closer to who I am as a person, as a woman, as a human with a stupid body and a beautiful mind. I show up to techno parties alone, always, and afraid often. I keep showing up because I know I’ll leave brand new. Being denied the opportunity to have that experience at the most famous club in the world is heartbreaking. I felt like I was being told I don’t belong in a space I’ve claimed as my own the past few years. How silly that sounds! It’s only a club, I know this. But I have such a strong emotional attachment to techno and the space it inhabits. As the sadness from the rejection drains away while I’m writing this, I’m thinking about all the truly magical parties I’ve been to in the past. The ones where I’ve had sex on a gross mattress surrounded by other couples having sex with psytrance playing in the background. The ones on boats with swanky lighting and chilled out energy. The ones that are super illegal so they take place in a warehouse that smells like DMT. At the time, it felt like those parties were what was worth living for. I built my life around them, because they made me feel like the world was perfect, like I was unstoppable, like the fun was happening all the time and it never had to end. I have thought of my old friend from high school who commit suicide shortly after we graduated while at parties and wished he could have hung out a little longer so he could experience them. We’ve come a long way from chain smoking cigarettes in the park while plotting how to steal beer, babes! I never got to say goodbye to him. It could be the conversations we never got to have that are reason enough to keep us moving forwards. 

If you had asked me even a month ago what the best feeling in the world is, I would have said leaving the club at 7am after dancing all night. Now I’m not so sure. Maybe it’s the parties we missed out on, the ones we had to hear about after the fact, the ones we yearn for that can teach us the most. Maybe the best feeling is knowing we don’t have enough time or space to experience it all and continuing to try anyway. Something somewhere is happening right now that is changing someone’s life for the better and we don’t even know about it. That, the knowledge that something cooler than whatever you’re doing is happening without you and you might never get to experience it, might be what’s worth living for. 

Feelings of rejection and sadness and fear that you’ll never find a space that you can claim as your own can lead to determination and ultimately to freedom. I dance while I still can because the next one isn’t guaranteed. The sun still comes out tomorrow and the music goes on, but it has to stop, eventually. We all have to go home at some point. I need to keep exploring new feelings because if I’m always living life in the fast lane feeling on top of the world then I’m not really living at all because I’m missing out on what might be the coolest part of human existence: imagination. Creativity. Resilience. The more I miss out on the more I get to dream about what could happen next. Inspiration, courage, and knowing I can rebuild no matter what happens to me is dope. 

Beautiful people of the night, I hope you know how lonely you are, how much there still is to see, how much you’ve lost, and continue to send it anyways. 

I’m thinking of my life 6 months from now because I’ve grown tired thinking of where I’ve been. I’ll be 28 in November, which is interesting because I’ve told everyone I’ve met recently that I’m already 28. Whoops! Things are looking like I won’t live in the states anymore but if you ask me why or where home will be I can’t say a definitive answer. Planet earth? I’ll still be close with my family and I’ll be making new friends and still loving the old ones just as much as I always have. In my DM’s I’ll have more men than ever and I’ll leave them all on read. The world is burning and I’ll be out dancing. I’ll be lonely as hell and I’ll look at cool art. I’ll be reading books in parks when the sun’s out and when the weather sucks I’ll be ripping out pages of magazines that look interesting. My writing will suck and I won’t listen to EDM anymore (techno and house music are not EDM.) I’ll still be single and perpetually looking for…something. Maybe the point. I’ll get rejected from Berghain until one night I get accepted. I’ll go on failed dates until I meet someone cooler than me. I’ll have a lot of interesting conversations with cool people and there will always be something new I could be seeing, something fun I could be doing, someone else I could be meeting, and I’ll keep dreaming of doing it all. I’m an addict so I’ll try anything until it almost kills me so let’s give another year a go. The cool thing about being 28 is time is on my side.