I recently took a deep dive into my heart. I left my friends, my home and everything that was familiar to me, and moved across the Atlantic. I arrived into my new country with a suitcase in one hand, my daughter’s hand in the other and my heart full of promise.
I spent the first couple of weeks living in a hotel, and spent the days looking for flats: one flat a day, then three flats a day. And 23 flats later, I had become completely exhausted and feelings of fear and anxiety began to creep in.
Even though my mother tongue is English, so many of my interactions left me feeling so incredibly alien and insecure. Acronyms abounded in every conversation.
“Whats your social?” My real estate agent asked.
“Uhm, I am not really active on social media” I responded, wondering why she would need this anyway. She gave me a hard stare.
“What-is-your-so-cial se-curity-num-ber,” she spat out, with an exaggerated eye roll and a condescending huff.
Right, Ok. I get it.
I’m OOO next week, by the way. I didn’t dare respond. But looked it up later on.
There was clearly a great deal of code, that I would have to learn to fit in here, it seemed.
On the last day of the month, my agents- all four of them told me that there was nothing more on offer. I also did not have a credit history in this country, which made it even more difficult for any landlord to rent me a flat. Credit clearly doesn’t seem to extend beyond country boarders.
An elderly lady whom I had met at the hotel, overheard my conversation and shard that she had just heard about a private listing.
I called the number listed, got a cab and headed over.
The minute I walked inside of the flat, my heart smiled, and my daughter took out her wallet, gave the landlady three coins, and proudly stated that, “We were taking this flat!”
I let the lady upfront know that I did not have a social security number, nor a credit score to prove that I would be a good tenant. We exchanged a few words and within a few minutes, I had a landed a home.
That night, as I sat on the ground of the empty flat, my feelings and thoughts took turns between fear towards the unknown, and excitement towards this unknown.
A faint knock at the door took me away from my thoughts. I cracked it open and saw a gentleman, carrying a smile and holding a beautiful, pink box, which he handed over to me.
“We live next door, and just made a batch of chocolate chip cookies to welcome you.”
An awkward moment of silence followed, because there was a huge fanfare party going on in my body, and no words could come out my mouth. I wanted to jump and scream and shout and cry, but I managed to hold myself back, with squinted eyes and a much-too-wide smile.
The chocolate chip cookies were the perfect texture with a thin, crispy exterior, and a beautifully chewy centre, sprinkled delicately and perfectly with sea salt.
They were the perfect welcome; a taste of home, for which I had craved. That was when I knew that things are going to be O.K., after all.
