My “Main Character” Life Moved on Without Me

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Today I woke up late, as per usual. The soul of a fundamentally confused GenZ required more sleep than a hibernating mammoth sometimes. Doubts clouded my mind, self-loathing for all the things I wish I were but am in fact NOT, bubbled to the surface, and the question of whether turning on the AC is reasonable if I am leaving in 30 minutes anyway distracted me.

If you have ever lived in Taiwan, you will know the struggle.

As I contemplated how thin my clothes should be for the day, while still hiding enough skin to avoid a sunburn, I was still confused. Until the very moment that I leave the house and my door ding-dongs as a way of saying “goodbye” to me for the day, I am a mess. Seriously. Lost and confused.

But then the sun shines in my face, endorphins rise to the top, and I feel like the main character of my life again. Call it self-indulgent, but if you were me, you would know how much just a little encouragement is needed sometimes. By moving abroad, I have completely reoriented my life’s compass, and for a long time, in all honesty, I had an idea of who I wanted to be.

That was until I recently looked around and realized that who I am can only ever be determined by the environment I am in. My life is just a play after all, and my city, the stage.

Tickets to a new show

Interestingly, two things are true at the same time:
Moving abroad gives you the chance to meet yourself in a way that allows you to step away from the “you” your home and culture assign you to.

That way, you are free to find who “you” truly are.

But this move also decenters you, makes life shaky, almost hard to bear sometimes. I recently learned that this feeling of overwhelm has a name: Ulysses syndrome. It is when persistent stress confines you to your bed that you realize you need more sleep in than others your age, and you feel like a hamster running in a wheel with the breaks on.

I think I have previously made very clear that I am not one to gloss over the disadvantages of life abroad, but the craziness of it is how bright it can be within all of the darkness. Which is why I want to say thank you to the home of my fragile heart: Kaohsiung.

Truthfully, when I demanded to step off the stage that my previous life played in, it felt like I simply entered a new theatre via an airplane. Now I am playing a new character, according to a new script with a new costume on my body. But it is still up to me to accept or decline the role.

The price of switching roles

I got a very good look at who I would’ve been had I stayed in Austria.

I had a boyfriend who would’ve likely eventually become my husband. Him or any other Austrian man. Either way, I would’ve been a cute and lovely speech therapist, cuddling little children every day for work and counseling their hyper-stressed mothers.

Eventually, I would’ve become a mother too, built a beautiful house, totally outside my price range, which would’ve confined me to Austria for at least a few decades, because kids AND a house are a lot financially, especially in the current economy. All of this would’ve required me to give up on my greatest pleasure in life: Travel.

Had I opted to keep playing that part, I would soon be a vegetarian, smiling, ever-understanding eco-mother with white IKEA cabinets and generic statements like “love yourself” on the wall, because that is really the only thing I would notice was lacking. This is exactly what my life led up to until I wrote the first chapter of my book “Facing Away”, which illustrates my story since the day that I stepped on an airplane to change my entire life.

Kaohsiung was the backdrop for most of the life I learned to live since I exited my old self.

I see more and more people online talking about why expats find it so hard to return home, and I can absolutely attest to that statement. I return home for the summer each year. This year might be the first time that I am forced to stay at home to save money, but there is no doubt in my mind that I will find a way to leave again, because that old role now feels oddly “rehearsed”, like a true theatre in real life.

Growing wings was hard, but I now notice that they itch when I don’t fly.

In a way, I got addicted to two things: Exiting the comfort of my own boundaries and the feeling of making decisions that speak to my soul. Both of which come at quite a high price, financially and emotionally, in our world. Freedom of choice truly is damn expensive.

The new theatre for my life

One of my favorite views of Kaohsiung, my current hometown, is from the rooftop of the library. The very place I am sitting at right now to write this article.

I only discovered this place very recently, which is really dumb, but I am choosing not to call it “a shame”. From there, you can see Cijin Island, the big ships parked in the water, aligned in one neat line, like they were an artist’s invention, rather than real. Calmly shining above it lies the white lighthouse that sheds dreamy rays circling over the town at night.

On the other side of the harbor lies Shoushan Mountain, with my intellectual home, my university, hidden behind it. There is sleepy little Hamasen, which seems like it preserves the past, like it is purposefully kept in a princess’s sleep, but is actually changing more than people give it credit for.

This is where I lived for around a year.

Closer to the viewer lies Pier 2, with its amazing museums, cultural venues, and open-air artwork. It is the place where music festivals, markets, and festivities are held every weekend. By this point, I have gotten so used to how pretty it is to sit on the tram and drift above it, like on a magic carpet, that I barely notice its appeal.

This is also where my all-time-favorite building in Kaohsiung is located: The Kaohsiung Music Hall. It is the most beautiful example of modern architecture I have ever seen, and every time I lay eyes on it, I get dreamy. I sat there, in the grass, many times, imagining that the guy next to me so much as cared about me.

The whole area is fittingly called “Love Pier”, where Love River empties into the harbor’s ocean water. It is lit up in synchronous colors, to the extent that I would still see the colors blink next to my house, far, far up the river. I always remember wondering where that switch is located that controls the lights along the entire river, and I asked myself whether I could sync it up to my Spotify.

Now I live near the 85 building, the one place where I feel like most foreigners here eventually end up. Living next to the tallest building in the city makes me happy every day, but it is also bittersweet to stare up at it. Knowing that the view I wanted for my entire two and a half years of living here is up there, somewhere between floors 50 and 85, and yet I have never made it to actually living there.

And all along this beautiful scenery snakes the LRT, the Kaohsiung tramline that just finished two years ago, and that is actually produced by a company from my home country, Austria. This is why it makes the same sound as the trams in Vienna, which always gives me a feeling of home.

New stage, new me

Interestingly, the environment in which my new life played out is not much older than the role I inhabit here, as the local foreigner wandering around town.

Most of the buildings and places I just described (aside from the island and mountain, of course) were finished in the late 2010s to early 2020s. I arrived in September 2023. The renewal of the harbor here in Kaohsiung is so recent that local friends my age still remember how Love River used to be a stinky industry-dump, and the tram line I just mentioned was finished three months after I arrived.

This is all very much insane to a girl who grew up in good old Europe, where things rarely ever change.

And this is why I now know that Kaohsiung was the perfect stage for my new life, because essentially I was a new girl in a new town. The song New Soul by Yael Naim really rings true for me as she sings:

“I’m a new soul, I came to this strange world hoping I could learn a bit ‘bout how to give and take.”

I wish I had counted how many times I hummed or sang this song, walking down the streets that “had always been that way” for me, a newly arrived foreigner, despite the concrete being as new as me in this city. And there was admittedly a contentment I found in realizing this recently, as I stared at the new buildings dotting the harbor I had grown so accustomed to.

But since returning from Seoul, where I stayed for a couple of months, the view now has a weird tang to it. Almost like the Gochujang sauce has not yet left my mouth, and it prompts me to bat open my eyes a little further than I would like to, causing me to see my harbor differently.

Change of plans

This new view makes the stage around me suddenly feel similarly rehearsed as my life in Austria used to be, though this realization hurts my deeply nostalgic heart. I am afraid I have grown to exit the sense of “newness” and opportunity that this place has always gifted me.

The mirror that this city held up to me now shows a bizarre image. Like it is now, not a mirror, but a window to the past.

And I am scared of this finding, because it means that potentially, I have become a sailor, not an expat as I wished to. Possibly, this is not my forever place, but my “in-between place”, much like the university and the label “student”. Now I don’t sing New Soul here anymore, but I grumble Olivia Dean’s Seen it all with teary eyes as I mouth:

“I’ve seen it grow old and forget, until its just a silhouette, til someone picks it up and sends it on. (…) The fairytale search goes on and on. (…) Catches your eyes, you blink and then it’s gone. Brings out the worst brings out the best, I know its somewhere in my chest, I guess it’s been inside me all along.”

And this time, all my role’s costumes hang in the closet in front of me: The old Austrian dirndl has a dusty cover, but might be revived. The colorful dresses I wear in Kaohsiung are still on their hangers, but the black and white silk skirts from Seoul are not yet forgotten either.

I dearly hope that Olivia is right in singing that “it has been inside me all along” and maybe one day, it will just jump out of my heart, the way a new character enters the theatre in a play. Until then, I thank the place that held my hand and my heart for so long, waiting for the next script to arrive at my doorstep.

Hopefully, someday soon…