Despite my best efforts, the anxiety is still real every time I leave Germany.
The morning starts like normal: my daughter waking me up and watching Curious George on the laptop while I drift in and out of sleep for 45 minutes. And then we play and eat breakfast, and there’s nothing at that point. But as the day continues, the ache in my chest telling me there’s something wrong (even when there’s nothing wrong), slowly starts to creep in. It grows despite my best efforts to ignore it, starve it to death, so that by the time I’m dropping off my daughter at her mother’s, I’m manic and I can barely see straight. This state of disbelief usually lasts me long enough to propel me to the outskirts of Amsterdam without caffeine.
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