Fresh snow and new beginnings

I moved to Bonn in 2021 and back then I was told I wouldn’t see snow as often here in winter as I did in Nuremberg. But then last week there was a thick blanket of snow on the streets, supposedly not seen in this quantity for 14 years. I haven’t checked it out, but it sounds good.

I’m not a winter sports fan, but I like the snow. I like it to make everything bright, calm and somehow special for at least 1-2 weeks. Preferably at Christmas, of course, but considering the traffic chaos that breaks out, mid-January might even be the better choice. I like it when it crunches underfoot and when the snow crystals glitter and twinkle like thousands of little stars. At that moment, of course, my deceased friend (Verena) was also in my thoughts, because she especially liked the crunching. I was up far too early that day and went for a walk through the fresh snow at 6:20.

New habbits

It’s not just the snow that’s new. I have also let new habits into my life. Perhaps I should say revived. Because these are habits that used to be part of my life and that were good for me.

One of them is reading. Sure, I read all day on my monitor and also the odd non-fiction book. But I explicitly want to read more fiction again, as a balance and to broaden my horizons. I already started this at Christmas and began with books that were among Verena’s favorites. I’ll write more about this in a later post, but I can say that this rediscovered habit has survived the first month well. And that discovering Verena’s annotations in one of the books gave me very ambivalent feelings. I am currently reading a book that she has never read (Torbjørn Ekelund – In Praise of Paths). I want to get away from the constant reminders.

The second new habit is strength training at the gym. At the time, I was already registered at… 4 different gyms in Nuremberg and only at the first one was I really regular in the long term. It just turned out that it’s incredibly important that I don’t have to travel long distances by public transport or even by car, but that the visit has to be very low-threshold. Despite the high monthly fee of around €80, I have now decided to join Sport-Treff 2.0. During the trial training session, both the trainers and the other members were super nice and mixed. And I can walk there in 8 minutes. If there’s a life for me as a regular gym user, then I’ll make it there. I’ll keep you posted and will definitely be going to training today.

The third and fourth habits that have been added back are board game rounds and meeting new people to root myself more in Bonn. Last Sunday, these two things came together when I had two new friends from the board game WhatsApp group here for a game of Ark Nova. We used to love organizing board game rounds and it was fun again this time and the company was friendly and uncomplicated (in case you’re reading this: thanks for the easy re-entry for me). We’ll definitely be doing this more often again now with changing groups.

Old difficulties

But not everything is forward-looking and in restart mode. Verena has been dead for 2 months since yesterday. It feels very far away, probably because she was in hospital for 3 months almost continuously before that and no longer here in the apartment. And then at night I have a dream from which I wake up completely confused because it felt so real and then reality knocks me down. And as I’m writing this, I have a big lump in my throat. I’ve never lost someone so close to me and I don’t know how long these phases will last. The reflex of wanting to share things I have just experienced with her is still present. The reflex to put the shower head back down “to her height” after showering has already disappeared.

The bouts of panic attacks have not disappeared. They actually got better and less frequent, but since I was at the grave on January 7, they have become more frequent again. I can usually nip the attacks in the bud, if only by escaping from the apartment or situation and going for a walk. During the last hour of game night, I’ve also had a recurring bout of this nervousness and restlessness, which then builds up. I “escaped” to the bathroom twice – that’s how I got through it. I don’t think you can tell from the outside, but inside I’m in a state of emergency. And I hope it gets better again soon.

Notes

This text has been machine translated from German.