Another Flood

The last time I flooded a bathroom was also around this time last year. It must be a sign that things are going to be alright—or that they’ll be a complete disaster.

Last year when I flooded the bathroom in the hotel I was staying at, I was lost somewhere in Italy. It was a complete and total manifestation of what was going on with me on the inside making itself present on the outside. I had gone to Italy on a whim, to work for a family I had only met through Skype in an hour-long interview that wasn’t really an interview. Rather, it was a “when are you coming?”

What could go wrong?

Luckily for me, the family I started working for as an au pair turned out to be completely safe. To be fair, if they hadn’t come recommended to me by someone I actually knew, I never would’ve risked that big. But there I was, having this completely amazing adventure biding my time before I had to decide what my next steps were. But, while I was living a life that seemed really incredible, on the inside I was struggling to make sense of what was happening with me. I had left Armenia thinking and believing that I had made peace with how my service came out, and I was hoping to stay in Europe to begin the next phase of my life. But things were continuously not working out—I wasn’t getting interviewed for anything I was applying for; I was finding it really hard to just pick something that I wanted to do. The only thing that I really knew was that I wasn’t ready to go back to Virginia feeling the way I was feeling.

How could I when I was continuously getting messages of how jealous people were, or how my adventures were inspiring? I didn’t want to be viewed at as broken or lost or anything other than that happy woman smiling big on some rock in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea.

I was also fighting this feeling of having to settle for a job I wasn’t interested in and didn’t really want. I had so many thoughts centered on the things I felt like I deserved that weren’t being handed to me. While everyone I knew were landing jobs—whether they were their dream jobs or just a stepping stone for something else—I was stuck arguing with myself. There were moments where I chastised myself for refusing to even bring myself to fill out the application for the Social Security Administration jobs that were out there. What right did I have to just be picky in finding the right job when I had this non-competitive eligibility status that should have opened up doors within government? What right did I have to be freaking out, when I had just spent the previous two-ish years having the adventure most people are too scared to have? How dare I be this picky.

These were all of the thoughts I had bouncing around my head as I headed to Lake Garda. The family I was working for had given me the weekend off so they could go to Oktoberfest, and while I could’ve gone too (and, I probably should have, considering it was my last weekend with them), I opted to spend my last sunny weekend in Italy at the lake. I packed up my book bag, booked a hostel, and got on a train. I was outwardly calm, but I was crying on the inside.

What was I doing?

If you’ve never been to Italy, you should know that, like most places in Europe, public transportation is superb in comparison with what we have in the U.S. You can catch a train to anywhere. The problem I always found during my Italian chapter was that the train announcer didn’t always sound clear. Sometimes the intercom would be broken or created an annoying fuzzy noise that made it hard to decipher what stop was coming up. At other points there would only be an Italian voice coming through speaking too fast for me, but slow enough for everyone else. So, if you miss even one word you could get lost. Which is what happened to me.

I was only half listening to the loudspeaker when it was announcing the station we were arriving to. I was busy combating other thoughts to be fully focused. I was also anxious, because I knew I would have to catch a bus and that the hostel I had chosen was going to close at 11pm, and it was already almost 9pm. I only caught the last word of the town the train was stopping in, which had the same word as the stop I was meant to have gotten off on. As soon as I got off the train and started moving off the platform, I realized something wasn’t right. The area wasn’t bustling with the tourists I had been expecting, it wasn’t bustling with anybody.

I went to turn back to the platform, but the train I had just disembarked from was already leaving. I went back to the lobby to see if someone could help me figure out when the next train was due to arrive, but everyone had gone home for the night. I was literally the only one waiting for the next train to come.

I called my hostel and said I would be arriving later than what I had originally expected, that my connecting train was coming within the hour. Rather than telling the truth about my plight, I lied to save face.

It was obviously a catastrophe.

A train did come. But it didn’t stop. So, I waited, thinking of my options. As I was about to go wander the streets in search for someone to help me, another train did show up and it did stop. It wasn’t going to where I needed to go (even though I thought it was), but what did I have left to lose? I was already lost in a country where I couldn’t speak the language. How much worse could it get?

Well, it got worse.

The train took me to its final destination a stop short of where I needed to be. But I had no idea where I actually was. The train ended up being the last one for the night into that station, with no trains going out. I decided to see how far I actually was from the hostel, and reasoned that I could just get a taxi. It would require me to use the ATM to withdraw the little cash I knew I had left from my readjustment allowance, but it was better than being stuck somewhere.

I went to the ATM, and it ended up being that my card stubbornly refused to work. I was in full on panic. I decided the best thing to do in that moment was to ignore the panic. If I could just get a taxi, they could take me to a different ATM and onward to my destination for my last weekend in Italy. Lucky for me, a kindly old taxi driver was waiting outside of the station. Unluckily for me, he didn’t speak English, but it was fine. I showed him where I wanted to go, and he gently said no. He said, he couldn’t allow me to justify spending the taxi to go out that far—it would’ve ended up costing me 70 euros. He then pointed down the street, past the scores of men that had made this particular city their home. He said the bus station was my best bet, and a ticket out there would cost significantly less.

I thanked him and made my way to the bus station, keeping my eyes averted so as not to attract any unwanted attention. I didn’t want anyone to wonder whether I was lost or alone. I didn’t want to seem as weak as I felt. When I got there, I had just missed the last bus by 15 minutes, and the bus terminal was closed until 7am, and I was at a loss for what to do. I had made every mistake in the book. I hadn’t gone to the ATM like I had meant to before I left Bolzano, leaving me with very little cash on hand. I had pre-booked a room in a hostel that didn’t give refunds and that wasn’t open 24 hours. And I wasn’t sure where I was—I didn’t know the name of the town, I didn’t know if I was in a good neighborhood or a bad one. All I knew was that I was totally fucked.

If I wasn’t so worried about coming off as weak to all of the men standing around, I would’ve cried. Instead, I pulled out my phone and typed in hostel, and made my way towards the first one that popped up. It ended up being closed. I rang their doorbell so many times, and nothing happened.

I took out my phone again to search for the next closest hostel.  There was one more hostel much further away, and a hotel two blocks from where I was. I didn’t have the energy to get to that other hostel; I didn’t want to walk anymore. I went to the hotel, which ended up being incredibly posh and expensive looking. And for what I could afford to spend, it was expensive. But it was located in the historical part of the city I was stuck in, and it maintained all of the elegance from when it was originally built. Coincidentally enough, it must have also maintained all of its original plumbing.

I went to the concierge desk, and the man was so helpful. He let me know where I was, and that they had one room available. For the same price of the taxi that would’ve taken me to where I needed to go, I was shown to this beautiful room, with impossibly high ceilings. I was so exhausted that even though I wanted a shower, I decided to just go to bed.

The next morning, I woke up and started the shower. In order to go into the bathroom, you had to step up as the bathroom was built on a raised platform. It was a strange set up, but the shower itself was amazing. Perfect pressure and scalding hot water. Sure, the water kept rising, but I was used to showers doing that after staying at the Envoy. I didn’t think anything of it.

Then I opened the shower door.

The floor didn’t just have a little pool of water on it. It was completely flooded with an inch of water and was spilling off the lip of the step onto the original hardwood floors of my hotel room.

This was the perfect time to cry. So, I did.

I cried for all the mistakes I had made, for all of the things that really were my fault. I cried for having been so stupid for actually believing that things would work themselves out. And all the while I was crying, I was using the extra towels to soak up the water. My clothes that I had pulled off and thrown on the floor were all drenched. I left those in the sink and took my miserable self on to my complimentary breakfast.

The breakfast was what I needed to reorient myself in the middle of my pity party. This wasn’t the first time during this au pairing adventure that I felt lost or the sense of panic that comes when one just doesn’t know what they’re doing. I made snap decisions that did work out for me. I went through the mental list of things that were shit to deal with, but ended up fine in the end and reminded myself that things did always work out for me, regardless of the lessons I was forced to learn and the ways in which I was forced to learn them.

I reasoned with myself that the night before could’ve been a lot worse. My phone could’ve died, or my battery pack could’ve been broken. I could’ve actually gotten in that taxi or been in a really horrible part of town.

When I got through with my mental pep talk, I willed myself to get up and return to the scene of the waterfall. Not before I stole the jam from my table.

Yep, I stole complimentary jam.

When I went back upstairs, I decided that this weekend was going to be amazing regardless of the shit show it started off as. My employer had texted me to make sure I was enjoying the lake, so I told the truth. I got lost, so I’m not there yet. “Ohmygosh where are you?” “I’m in a really nice hotel. I’ll send you a picture when I get to the lake.”

I packed up my drenched clothes in a plastic bag that I normally would’ve used to keep my dirty clothes separated from my clean ones, and checked out. I headed back to the bus station, and I had just made it to the bus before it pulled out of the station.

Of course, I didn’t have a ticket. The driver told me to get off the bus and purchase a ticket from the counter. He would wait for me, much to the annoyance of the other passengers. But I took it as a sign that things were turning around.

When I got back on the bus, the driver pulled out of the station and we were off. The day was so different from the night before. The surrounding area didn’t seem threatening anymore; there were families doing their shopping and it just seemed altogether more inviting.

When we reached the town I was going to, the driver made sure to tell me that I was where I needed to be. I was where I needed to be, despite being a complete and total wreck.  At the reception desk of the hostel I was staying at, I was welcomed with, “we were waiting for you last night, what happened?”  Again, I told the truth, to which the receptionist said “Well, you’re here now.  Go and seize the day.”

I spent that last weekend on the lake, eating some of the best food I will ever eat, taking in the views of the lake and just being present in my situation.

I wasn’t as lost as I thought I was. I had people in my corner who cared about me, and ultimately, things did work out for me. They still do, no matter how shitty things seem at the time, they do work out, and I will continue to have the audacity to believe that they will.

Flashforward to now: I am sitting in my room in my new studio-styled apartment (it’s literally a room), in a new city about to embark on another terrifying adventure. And I flooded my bathroom taking such a great shower.

I have no idea what this next year will bring, but despite the uncertainty, I know that the risk will be worth it. I know that I can be scared of what’s to come, while being brave enough to face it.