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“I didn’t have one,” I explain. I elaborate at her questioning stare. “It’s not something I was comfortable with. That, plus... I don’t have a lot of close friends I could have celebrated with.”
“Oh,” she says, in a confused-slash-pitying tone.
The words fumble out of my mouth before I can stop them. “It’s not like I didn’t try to make friends,” I continue. “I fell out with a lot of my high school friends after we graduated; they were the kind of people who I realized were only my friends because we saw each other every day, you know?”
“Oh, yes,” Kelly sympathizes. “I definitely had a few of those.”
“Then in university I was painfully shy, so I only became close friends with two girls,” I continue, like I’m physically unable to hold my words in. I’ve never spoken any of these feelings aloud, but now that I’ve started, I can’t seem to stop. “I lost touch with them once I entered teacher’s college. Then I befriended one guy, who, at the end of our degree, told me he couldn’t be friends with me anymore because it made his girlfriend uncomfortable.”
“Yikes. That doesn’t sound like a healthy situation.”
“It really wasn’t, but what was I supposed to say? We ended up finding each other on Instagram a year or so later, and I learned he’d left her shortly after we stopped being friends because the relationship had become too stifling. We stayed in casual contact after that, but we aren’t close. But he is the one who told me about the great opportunities people find teaching English abroad. He was teaching in South Korea, and he came home for a visit. We had dinner, which is when he convinced me to consider joining him in teaching over there. He had nothing but positive things to say, and since I’d been feeling like I was stuck in a rut, I agreed.”
“South Korea?” Kelly grins. “That sounds so exciting! You up and left for a whole other country, just like that?”
My smile falters. “I had to convince my mom, but eventually I went and stayed there for about two years.”
“Wow. Now I’m even more jealous of you. You’re living life how you want. You should enjoy that independence while it lasts, because after you get married, everything changes. Your priorities shift. You can’t decide to go somewhere by yourself, because you have someone waiting for you at home. Take this time to have some fun. I promise you’ll regret it if you don’t.”
I know that’s what my situation looks like on the outside, to a stranger. Young woman about to get married having the time of her life by herself in Switzerland.
And I kind of like the image of myself Kelly has in her head. Like I could be that young jet-setter who has it all: a handsome fiancé, two years of living in a foreign country under her belt, and the kind of self-confidence that only comes from being comfortable living with yourself. Someone who is absolutely fine traveling on her own and doesn’t feel like she needs to talk to the stranger sitting beside her on a plane to keep from feeling like she’s falling apart.
Maybe...maybe I should go to Interlaken. Yes, it’s risky to leave the city where my flight leaves from, because a dozen things could go wrong in my attempts to return. But Kelly’s admiration of me makes me want to fully encompass the image she has of me. Besides, if Crash Landing on You has taught me anything, it’s that even if I end up on the wrong train (or plane in my case), I’ll still end up at the right destination. So why shouldn’t I take the risk? Why shouldn’t I try to break a few rules before I get married and my life changes forever?
This is me taking control of something, and I know it’s going to work out.
“I definitely will.”
9
Maya’s Law #9:
Right when you think you’ve got it figured out, the world will humble you.
The first stop on the tour is Lake Zurich. The tour guide speaks primarily in German, so I pay more attention to the prerecorded information the bus itself provides. Kelly and I chat lightly while we listen to the tour, and she even interprets some of the tour guide’s commentary for me.
I forgot how fun it can be to hang out with strangers. When I went to South Korea, I told myself I wasn’t going to make the same mistakes as I did before when it came to being in a new environment. I’d be outgoing, and make friends, and have the time of my life. I was only going to be there for two years, and when I got home, I’d be back in the real world, one where I was going to be married. I was not going to waste the incredible life experiences I was offered.
And for a while, it worked. I was open and engaging and made a bunch of friends within the program. When those friends made plans to travel around the rest of Korea and Japan, I took charge of the planning so I could be as involved as possible. While the rest of them got drunk, I was always the friend you could rely on to get you home safely. I was the everyman, with a toe in lots of different groups.
But the problem with pretending to be someone else? It’s not sustainable in the long run. After the first year, I returned to my old ways. I didn’t want to go out. I preferred to stay in and mark assignments. The farthest I went from home was the restaurant around the corner from my apartment. The problem with being in lots of different groups is you don’t quite belong in any of them. There were times I missed inside jokes. Times I wasn’t able to make it to one group’s outing because I was desperately trying to mend a hole in another group. I got to a point where I naturally drifted right out, so I stopped trying to find friends in strangers.
But hanging around Kelly is effortless. Maybe it’s because she’s a mom, and my closest friend is my mom. Maybe it’s because she’s funny. Or maybe it’s because we know that at the end of the two hours, we’ll go our separate ways and never see each other again. Maybe that’s the beauty in friends you meet on vacation: you can be whoever you want to be, but at the end of the day, you go back to being yourself.
“It’s so beautiful, isn’t it?” Kelly says as we stand at the lakeside and stare out at Hafen Enge. She moves her eyes every couple of minutes to check on her kids, but she remains engaged with me, making great use of that multitasking talent moms have.
“It sure is. The pictures don’t do it justice.”
“They never do,” Kelly points out. “Sure, it’ll look like the place, but there’s a certain...magic missing.”
Standing here, staring out at Lake Zurich, watching the way the light makes the reflection on the water glitter, it’s hard to believe I won’t live in this moment forever. I’ll have to get back on that bus. I’ll have to get back on that plane. I’ll have to keep going.
“Maya, do you think you could take some photos of me and the kids?” Kelly’s voice breaks my reverie. She holds her phone out to me.
“Of course.”
When we get back to Zurich, Kelly and I exchange Instagram handles. “If you ever find yourself in Germany, be sure to look me up,” she insists.
