WTF or Healthy Nerves? What do you call it?

March 26, 2015

WTF or Healthy Nerves? What do you call it?

I am not the type of person who spends much time worrying and every time I have done something that scares me, it didn’t scare me until it was too late to do anything about it.

For instance, I remember when I was 17; I had started talking to my father in May, having successfully tracked him down through snail mail in Mexico and at the end of June, a week after graduation, I boarded a flight to meet him and the Rodriguez family in Mexico. I didn’t over think each step to prepare for my first international flight, my first trip alone, my first time away. I simply went through the steps, I applied for a Passport, I saved the bit of money I could from my cashier job, and asked for a suitcase for my graduation present. When the day of my departure arrived, I went to the airport and went through the motions. My flight was 6 hours and it was fun, it still had not occurred to me what my fate was after the airplane landed. Then after we landed and before I reached Mexican Customs, I stopped to use the washroom. Mexican washrooms are not like Canadian washrooms, not as cleanly, sometimes they have toilet paper, sometimes they don’t, sometimes they have a toilet seat, and sometimes it’s just the bowl. So this Mexican washroom gave me my first bit of culture shock. That culture shock turned into what I like to call the “WTF” (what the F*ck!) moment. In this WTF moment, I realized, in minutes, I would be meeting my father, a man, I had no memory of and had only talked to on the phone for the last two months. Not only was I going to meet this man, I had agreed to spend the whole summer with him, in a country I didn’t know, with a language I hardly spoke. And it’s in this moment that all the worries and all the risks started to come crashing down. But it is too late to turn back, there’s only one way out of that bathroom and that’s forward, towards the unknown.

That was my first WTF moment and in all my preceding adventures, I have come to recognize (and name) that moment, it always happens, and luckily for me, it happens when there is no alternative but to move forward. My Sailor and I discussed this moment; I wanted to know if he also experienced a similar moment. He wasn’t the biggest risk taker before I met him but he had some noteworthy adventures. He said that he wouldn’t call it a WTF moment, and he typically had what he liked to call “Healthy Nerves” and Healthy Nerves would set in sooner than my WTF moment. But he tried to use the energy from the Healthy Nerves to push him forward, a sign that he was on to something great.

Before my adventure to Germany, I suddenly lost most of my hearing and needed to organize financial support to get hearing aids. I had to deal with a pretty huge turning point in my life along with organizing my study abroad adventure which included packing up my home and putting it into storage. I had a month, January, to solve the mystery of what happened to my hearing, complete the application for funding for a hearing aid and receive said hearing aid, pack up my apartment and put it into storage, and to pack for Germany and have my paperwork completed. Then I had a week and it felt like everything had to magically or miraculously come together during that week. That’s when it hit me WTF was I doing! Why was I going to Germany when I didn’t even know how to be a deaf person in my own country? What if I didn’t get the hearing aids I needed in time? Why was I going to be learning German when I should be learning how to do sign language? Could I really handle the added challenge of being deaf and studying abroad? Was I putting too much pressure on myself and not taking care of myself? Should I really be doing this?

This WTF moment came early and I had the option to change my mind; I didn’t have only one way to go. My WTF moment came too soon.

So one week before I was to leave Victoria, I was rethinking this whole adventure. My Sailor and I discussed all the options. He supported me in whichever decision I made but ultimately it was mine to make. I was ready to throw in the towel, to take a step back, but I worried, would I regret not going to Germany? Would I look back and think “What if?”

Then, as best friends always manage to do, one of mine wanted a Skype call because she was having a rough day or week. I messaged her back and said, “I don’t think I will be much help, I am also having a rough go of it.” She said, “Perfect, we can cry together.” And that’s what we did. It was messy, beautiful and ended with smiles. I came away from that conversation with her, with the best advice, advice from someone who has known me since my preteen years. Her wise words were, “Go to Germany, you always push yourself and even when it’s difficult and seems impossible, you always succeed and come out the other side better for it. It wouldn’t be you, if you didn’t push yourself.” (I quoted my understanding of what she said and not her direct words.)  That’s when I realized, yes, it would be an extra challenge, but I could do it, like I have done, many times before. I needed to summon the worries and turn it into Healthy Nerves.

That’s what I did. That week, everything came together, sometimes through magic, and sometimes through sheer willpower and persistence.

The Healthy Nerves helped give me the energy to push forward and now, I am in Germany, and there is only one direction; forward.