It’s within the quiet moments when my intrusive thoughts win. I’m lying with friends beneath the linden trees dotting Wohlers Park, or walking along the proud, conceited Jungfernstieg waterfront, or dissociating, staring blankly into the wild and towering wall of green that forms a protective barrier along the outskirts of my backyard. But then it finds me, struck into my mind and impossible to ignore:

What the fuck am I doing here?  

For nearly two years, I begged, pleaded, and bargained to be nowhere else but here. Here is Hamburg, of course. But more than that — it’s Europe. And in Europe, everything is sexier! We have skinny cigarettes, legal prostitution, and healthcare.

Despite having it all, I have been struggling to get out of bed for the last three weeks. I’m uncertain if this is because I’m experiencing depression or a clinical Vitamin D deficiency. However, no god-forsaken amount of Vitamin D could cure my yearning — a gross, greedy gnawing in the pit of my stomach that insists “Everything good is happening somewhere else.” This feeling has been no stranger to me, persistent throughout my childhood, alone and only connected to worldly pleasures via my family’s 1999 Windows home computer. But I am no longer a child and, in fact, there is something good happening directly in my own backyard. Indeed, there is a fig tree that I imagine stood tall and firm while the city rearranged itself around it, quietly pushing roots through indifferent soil. Perhaps the first fig tree ever, with its winding branches reaching out to me, beckoning me as I have a European Summer Cigarette on the balcony. A friend of mine commented that there must be magic in the ground below, as it’s uncommon for fig trees to thrive in the finicky northern climate. I don’t believe in astrology but now I do believe there is, undoubtedly, magic in my backyard.  

Sylvia Plath famously wrote of her own fig tree: “I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked….I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose.” The irony here is that she effectively chopped down her own metaphorical fig tree. As a mentally-ill teenager, Plath was ripe for my adoring idolization. She had all the premier qualities for sad girl worship: borderline tendencies, a failed marriage, and a tragic yet poetic death. She was The Father of my Holy Trinity, alongside The Virgin Suicides & Girl, Interrupted.  

I survived my teenage years by accident — I didn’t want to live but I didn’t exactly know how to die. I grew up as an only child on a small, resort island off the coast of South Carolina, whereas most kids’ idea of fun was finding new and inventive ways of distracting themselves from family dysfunction. For me, this included, but was not limited to: drinking gas station alcohol next to my 8th grade classroom, playing Kingdom Hearts on PlayStation until I suffered brain damage, or becoming someone else entirely, playing pretend with older men in candle-lit Broughton Street bars. Perhaps unsurprising, it was difficult for me to make friends and I always knew that although the island was many things — beautiful, safe, a poor man’s paradise — it was not Home. Home had to be somewhere else. It certainly wasn't where every street curved back toward a golf course and every conversation ended in “Bless your heart!” Home wasn't a place as much as an argument I was having with myself. So, I would seek answers amongst the unmonitored and all-knowing. Illuminated by the soft glow of Tumblr, my eyes would dart across the screen, frantically scrolling an endless sea of far-away places: Greek islands, Japanese mega-cities, western European exclaves.

I was desperate to see them all, firmly holding the belief that Home was a numbers game. Surely, Home was patiently waiting for me, keeping the lights on and fire stoked. I imagined that upon my arrival, I would experience the profound realization that I’d found it, dawning as naturally upon me as a wide-eyed deer born with the instinctive ability to walk. Home would welcome me with open arms and my absurd, all-consuming search would finally come to an end. I just had to visit everywhere, be everywhere, and eventually the aching, longing void in me would be satisfied.

I’ve always said that my purpose in life is to collect experiences. And in this way, I would not acquiesce to a pathetic, solitary fig — I would harvest them all, my basket over-flowing with abundance. My proverbial cup shall runneth over! There are versions of myself hard at work, weaving together a plot so deeply convoluted and full of obscurities that even I could not untangle the threads. Move to a small, rural town outside of Osaka to study economics? Well, yes! Pick up DJ-ing after a failed situationship nearly induced psychosis? Okay! Fly to Marseille and stay for the week with someone you’ve met only once? It doesn’t matter the outcome — whether good or bad or somewhere in-between — only that I had the experience. These are attempts at self-actualization, ways of coming back to myself during my long and impossible journey home. 

On my German Hinge profile, I answered the prompt “The biggest risk I’ve ever taken…” with “…is moving from NYC to Hamburg.” At least once a week, this specific prompt attracts attention:

“Why would you do that?”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Do you feel like you’ve made a mistake?”

I’ve heard that it takes 10 years to become a True New Yorker but I’m rounding up. During my final years in the city, I was carrying around a tremendous weight. It’s impossible to pinpoint when it became too heavy but one thing was certain: I was being crushed. I could no longer carry my life and remain upright beneath it. But oh, how beautiful the glimpses of weightlessness, refracted through the smoke-screens and renegades along Broadway & Myrtle Avenue. I’ve always had a high tolerance for alcohol and bullshit.  

It’s true that I’m a Certified Hedonist. I would never deny these allegations. I’ve always been drawn to the idea of pleasure as a means, and a means again, with no end in sight. At my best, I was a party girl with purpose, wielding a penchant for chaos and potential, arriving to Bushwick’s most soulless afters with ease. It’s a world I was bound to with others, obligated to bring others into, as we subscribed meaning within its seductive, gluttonous confines.  There is a rare, glistening version of myself, free from judgmental eyes, existing somewhere between midnight and dawn. How far have we evolved, really, from Bacchanalian rituals? Ancient Greek philosophers believed that one of our greatest earthly pursuits is the pursuit of losing ourselves, entirely, even if only for a brief moment.

You could say my move across the Atlantic is just as rooted in losing myself as it is about regaining custody. I had spent my whole life believing that fulfillment existed elsewhere, only to arrive and discover that hunger survived the journey. Surely, I am more than all of the port cities I’ve lived in? More than my nights melted into morning? More than my traumas and obscurities and pursuits in romance?

The fig tree, its base gnarled and imposing, continues producing fruit whether I am certain or not. Every morning another fig hangs heavy upon the branch, sticky and splitting at the seam, asking nothing of me except that I notice it. Of course, not all of the figs will be harvested. Some will fall into the grass, bearing rot and ruin. Others will disappear by morning, carried off in the beaks of blackbirds, becoming flight and song.  And yet, if only out of spite, the tree will survive.

In greed, I continue to reach and strain for each fig. Every city. Every version of myself. Every future. Abundance has always meant collecting and harvesting and experiencing. 

But Hamburg sits before me now, pregnant with potential. What if, for once, I stayed long enough for the fruit to ripen?

Avery Fine is a Hamburg-based, NYC-bred multimedia artist, reformed party girl, & researcher.  Originally from the South Carolina coast, she developed a fascination for port cities, strange corners of the internet, and places that don't quite feel like home. She currently spends her free time studying the German language and yearning.

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