It all started with a piece of paper.
How a handwritten piece of shit---I mean paper---turned our lives upside down
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It was March. The third month has always been one of the most arduous quarters of the year, as my mother would often say. Because oftentimes, when December hit hard, for sure, the next three months of the next year would be a hell of a lot of a ride. More than just an emotional roller coaster ride.
Then, I figured out she was right.
We started 2023 feeling stuck, trying to move on and aspire for change. A decision we made after years of self-sabotage. My husband’s hate for his job grew over time, and after a back injury he earned from lifting a fucking heavy safe like Superman, life had been hell for him. With a helicopter boss demanding him around, surrounded by lousy co-workers, and a monthly salary that barely paid monthly rent, he sure had a great time at work.
I, on the other hand, felt like AI had taken over my work, leaving me feeling useless as a writer. Since its release, I haven’t received offers that were relevant to my skills because why would they need me if they could use ChatGPT for free?
Since I arrived in Germany, my freelance writing career slowly went south as if the gods were getting tired of my relentless pursuit. My long-term client walked away to pursue a different direction for his own career, my short-term Upwork and OnlineJobs.ph clients ended up short (laughs), and some went missing in action (and refused to pay half of the money they owed). Opportunities became bleak for months. If lucky, I could find a gig that paid a few hundred dollars, but that was it.
Damn, I thought, staring at my screen, feeling so helpless with my arms folded. For days, I was left drowning with my thoughts. “I’ve tried everything. But none is working,” I said. In my conscious mind, I knew it was a hot afternoon without plans, going through the day without expectations. What else could I expect when everything around me was in mayhem anyway?
Then, everything went from bad to worse when a loud doorbell slammed our ears. I was in the kitchen at that time, cooking for our lovely dinner. Wondering who it was, I assumed it was either the landlord or his Hausfrau (housewife in German). Before I poured the well-cooked noodles into the plain white ceramic, a door slam punched my ears. With a steaming bowl in my hand, I strode to check, only to welcome an angry expression on my husband’s face.
“Who was that? What happened?”
When I slipped my gaze, I caught a handwritten note in his hand. He might have sensed that I must know the truth, so it didn’t take long before he opened his mouth and spoke. “We have to move out,” he said, moving his attention to the PC, scrolling through eBay listings.
I froze. It felt like my palm was okay with the warm pain, carefully setting the bowl on my desk. My face was tight, trying to swallow the shock spilling all over me. Thinking it was a great option to ease, I went back to the kitchen and took plates and utensils as if the news didn’t matter.
As if. That was the problem.
Before I knew it, I had been staring at the empty tiled wall for a couple of minutes. If not because of my legs feeling numbed, covered with sensations like tiny needles poking my skin, I wouldn’t have realized that that ‘a couple of minutes’ had already been fifteen.
The noodles! They’re getting cold. I ran like my brain as it rushed, speeding up to figure out the solutions while trying to grope through the chaos of my thoughts. Then, my feet slowed, watching him looking so hopeless, almost close to crying, from afar. My heart clenched, feeling a pang of guilt swirling inside me.
Where do we go? I asked myself as panic began to swirl through my insides. With a heavy heart and a head in half-trance, I returned to my seat and offered the plate and utensils to him. As we ate, silence grew and thickened underneath the cool, tense air. None of us opened our mouths to complain about the soggy noodles or care to say a word about the news until we finished.
As the swirling breeze of spring arrived, the flowers bloomed, flashing colorful petals from red to blue, and the trees shone their proud greens. For that brief moment, I felt like the world was doing great and peaceful, moving past the cold and dry winter. Despite the increasing rush of traffic and people going through their daily lives, nature would always move on. As if they didn’t care about all the problems in the world.
I wished I could do the same, too.
Then, my stomach roared. I blinked, snapping my senses to reality, realizing I had been zoning out for a couple of minutes. And I hadn’t eaten anything yet. Standing at the train station with an IKEA bag, damped with sweat after hours of packing our stuff plus our eBay orders earlier that morning, alone, I wondered how I managed to carry through the odds with my head up without the emotional turmoil I was used to. Though I felt the rising violence in my chest time by time, I didn’t feel like I needed to release it, surprising myself.
Why? I should have been so overly dramatic now, I told myself, entering the train and heading home. However, the longer I thought about it, the more I recognized that something else played in my subconscious.
Sure, I felt proud to have learned how to pack things properly on my own. I felt so amazed by how my arms and legs had gotten stronger that I managed to stack up layers of moving boxes twice my height. But beneath the joy was worry that could reach the skies if uncontrolled. Packing could have been a pleasant experience if you knew where to go. Or, at least, if you knew you had a compatible truck or car to bring your stuff.
Underneath the ongoing progress, the fact that none of us had a driver’s license was an issue. There was no way for us to rent a truck, at least. Not even the landlord or any of their family members thought of helping us (only months later, when we already moved out). None of his friends offered help. At least his mother promised to help with the costs if ever we found one.
It had been nearly four months since we checked listings, reviewed apartments, and talked to different landlords to no avail. None of them called back or replied to our emails. The time was ticking. Without any financial resources, we were pretty sacked.
We would be homeless in no time.
“Do you think we’ll survive homelessness in Germany?” I asked one time, only to get rueful laughter from my dear husband. I couldn’t blame him. Without any support, without means, all we could do was laugh and forget the nightmare, even for a brief moment.
But deep down, underneath my indulgent smile and laughter, I knew I was on the verge of breaking apart. I wanted to cry, to lash out, to reveal my rawest anger, to scream, to break things like my heart shattering to pieces. My conscious self struggled to accept my reality falling apart. Every time I reached out to my family in the Philippines, I tried to hide the tears I wanted to shed, to tell them the full picture of how I was doing. I didn’t want them to worry more than they already were.
Each day, the pressure was on like a pressure cooking, waiting to burn, to scream its steam, and each step heading home was like entering a war. Since the handwritten notice, going home had never been the same. If we weren’t sad for whatever reason, either of the family members would bombard us, knocking on our door more frequently than usual.
By German law, they should have given us six months’ notice. Not the day after tomorrow. As if they itched so much they couldn’t wait for us to move out of their way. Whatever their plans were.
If not the Hausfrau, who seemed to love to raise her voice whenever she talked to me, thinking it would make her look more powerful and respectable than her husband, it would be anyone in their family reminding me of the same thing over and over again.
“Have you found a new apartment? Were you searching? When will you move out? Would it be soon?” These sentences would only vary with a few word differences. But the thought remained the same. Imagine hearing them at least three times a day. It was unimaginable. But I kept my composure intact instead.
Weekends weren’t spared, too. Even on Sundays, they requested my husband’s presence in their home a few times and surrounded him, drowning him with the same questions, like “Why can’t your wife speak better German? Why can’t she find some job and apply for bank loans?” The list of demeaning comments against me could go on. But out of respect, he stayed through the end, almost retching on his seat.
One time, I returned home from the city to ship eBay packages and found myself trapped in Hausfrau’s welcoming surprise. It felt like an ambush. She threw the broom and stopped whatever she was doing to slam the same line she’d been saying the whole time.
“Why can’t you speak better German? Tell your husband he should pay. We need the keys.”
Mentally scoffing, I offered her a smile, ruthlessly swallowing the urge to fight back, to argue. Because, in my mind, arguing with these types of people was senseless. Fighting against a Karen would only go nowhere and probably waste your time than you should. As an Ausländerin (immigrant), I knew I had to remind myself to act accordingly. I had to go with the flow.
“He knew what he should do. He’s an adult man. I don’t need to tell him what to do all the time,” I said in a calm way, though there was nothing calm in my system, and went inside without looking back.
Six months passed, and most of our stuff was moved to the new apartment (20 sqm smaller), more than a kilometer away from our old home. Thankfully, my guardian angels and the universe cooperated. They seemed to have touched the heart of my husband’s boss. Because he surprised him by offering one of his trucks for the moving without costs. He didn’t even ask for the gas. Along with my husband’s coworkers, they brought our things, from pieces of furniture to loads of boxes, and loaded them to the truck. For free.
Even on a mid-day, even when the sun shone the brightest, they worked hard, helping us carry the cabinets, packages—everything while I continued packing the remaining small stuff we had, like the housecleaning agents, cables, etc., in boxes. While watching them work, I thought life had always been beautiful and generous. But it would take a watcher’s eye, observing all the moments around, to notice it.
Just like how this group of men, as young as 23 years old and others at least 30 years old, some were in their 50s, whom I knew were also exhausted from a day’s work, still offered their lending hands for my husband. They understood our situation and were more than willing to help us without asking for anything in return. All for the sake of the karmic message, one of them said.
In an ever-fast-changing world, when everybody believed everything could be bought and paid for with money, witnessing the spirit of Bayanihan, a Filipino virtue of kinship and camaraderie, in a conservative yet rapidly industrialized country such as Germany was a rare sight. The kind of scene I would love to keep inside my heart and cherish forever as a lifelong lesson. A reminder that each one of us, regardless of race and cultural background, will always recognize the immense power of being human. Being human meant sharing common values, like love, peace, and harmony with one another. In whatever ways we can.
With a newly found apartment, another chapter was coming in fast. With a new neighborhood, new attractions to see, and new roads to explore, there was something more this place could offer. A place filled with undiscovered truths waiting to be written. Perhaps this new uncertain life could bring out something more magical than I’d experienced and imagined. Just as I’d hoped it would be.
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