The Most Important Rule of Trust Falls
Trust falls: Every control freak’s worst nightmare.
In case you haven’t been blessed with the experience of a trust fall exercise, let me quickly catch you up on the fun. Trust falls require a singular person in a group to position themselves in front a cluster of their new peers/comrades/colleagues. With their back facing the cluster, and their arms crossed in front of their body like a corpse, the poor individual must fall backwards and trust that the new folks they’ve just met, who have absolutely no vested interest in them, will spare them from hitting the ground with a loud thunk and, instead, come to the rescue and catch them.
If you’ve ever been to a theater camp, choir practice, new club with any somewhat-creative ties, or middle school sleepover in the United States, you’ve probably taken part in a few trust falls. In all honesty, the premise is sound. You have to give up control and very quickly place your trust in others. It’s a great way to get over your initial fear and hesitation of the associated change in a new setting.
Well y’all, this week felt like a big ol’ trust exercise for yours truly.
You see, I’ve actually been doing really well on this new journey into singledom. Until about Wednesday of this week.
For some reason, this Wednesday was a bummer. On this particular day I started to freak out about the impending urgency of getting my visa in Germany, which I can’t do until I register my address, which I can’t do until I move into a new flat, and well… I’m sure you can imagine where this cycle of stress is going, and it’s certainly not up! For some reason, when I was snug and cozy in the comfort of my relationship with someone who spoke German, this all didn’t seem so intimidating. I just felt like it would work out. Because I’d done it once before (in Portugal), and this time I was armed with a local partner who could vouch for me! But once I nixed the German partner part of this, I suddenly felt like I was free falling.
On top of this, on one particularly wine-induced evening with friends, the Bumble online dating app was unveiled and my friends and I went on a swiping spree among Hamburg’s most eligible bachelors. And for some reason on Wednesday, I realized that I’m not ready for Bumble yet (which makes sense. Duh.). This realization was driven by good ol’ fashioned fear, folks. You see, when I broke up with my first serious boyfriend in New York, I was reeling from a whirlwind of emotions and tried to drown my feelings in dates. You name an attractive, gainfully employed man in Manhattan and there’s a solid chance I dated him. I went a bit crazy, and approximately 8 weeks later, I hit a wall. All of the real emotions I had been trying to cover up with fun dinners and art galleries with a plus one, skyrocketed to the surface and I felt so… pathetic and lost.
Hold up a minute here, I’m not one for wallowing and self pity, so just know that “pathetic and lost” feeling I mentioned didn’t last for too long, and I snapped out of things, moved to Germany to start working for AIDA, and my life has only been up from there. But bottom line here is that I did not handle my last break up well. I didn’t like the person I became for those 8 weeks of serial dating. And this week I got really scared that I would become that not-great person again.
So Wednesday happened.
And I was feeling scared and unsure, just like the unlucky corpse-like person at the front of a trust fall. So I went for a walk.
And man, did that walk through the quaint streets of Eimsbüttel do me wonders! Because, as I weaved in and out of cobblestone streets lined with pre-war apartment buildings, I realized that I wasn’t giving myself enough credit here. (Which is a bit unusual for this empowered, confident soul.)
When I lived in Portugal, I navigated the visa process entirely alone. So let’s take stock of the facts here:
-My Portuguese is WAY worse than my German
-For the entirety of the Portuguese visa process, my boyfriend was living thousands of kilometers away
-I got the job to secure my visa entirely on my own, after scrapping together gigs and writing assignments for about a year, while also working full-time on a cruise ship
Yes, I had a good partner, and he provided words of encouragement, advice, and high-fives along the way. But I did the work. Me. Emily Claire Hughes did everything that it took to apply for a visa in Portugal. And it worked. I succeeded.
So now that I’m doing the exact same thing in another country (with slightly more rules), why am I scared? Well, besides the personal translator, I realized I lost the high-fives, encouragement, and advice from one special person, yes.
(But honestly, he wasn’t much help the first time so what exactly was I expecting him to do here to save the day?)
And this, my friends, is the only thing I allowed myself to be sad about on this walk. Yes, it’s true. The high-fives, encouragement and support from one singular person on this planet are gone. I can be sad about that, because they were pretty good high fives. But you know who else gives high-fives? The incredible network of friends I’ve built in Hamburg. You know who’s a pretty awesome translator? My German roommate who routinely offers to be helpful whenever possible. And you know who is perfectly capable of going through the visa process alone? Me.
And in this moment, as I passed the storefront of my favorite bakery in Hamburg, I realized I’m not the rebounding, eight-week serial dater version of Emily that I once was in New York. In fact, I’m a far cry from that, thanks to the growth and maturity that were basically thrown at me, when I navigated my move abroad, seemingly always in a lovely relationship with someone who wasn’t physically there.
I think when we’re in relationships, we enjoy sharing our successes with the other person, because it means we can also share the burden of our failures. But as a result, I think we lose the heightened level of individual success because we don’t want to throw off the balance, tipping the scale too far in one direction.
And this. This is where I found my motivation and power on Thursday. Friday. And every other day since Wednesday. I’m not sharing the scale anymore, which is why I had the fear of being thrown off balance and into a freefall, like my eight weeks in New York. But just like I did when I described that pesky, trust fall exercise above, I forgot the single most important step.
Closing your eyes, taking a deep breath, and trusting yourself, before leaning back into the world behind you.
I trust myself. I got this. And while there are better ways to realize this than breaking up with a boyfriend, I wanted to share this with all of you who may have forgotten to trust yourself along the way, wherever you are.
Own your successes. Revel in your victories. And trust.
Trust the people around you. Trust the community you’ve worked hard to build. And most importantly, trust yourself.
