Hello world, Clem is in the house

Amsterdam represented charm, beauty, and energy, yet felt inaccessible, unaffordable, distant. Now it represents a myriad of possibilities. I came from far, but this is also my home.

I am a chronically overprepared traveler. I always arrive 3 hours ahead of my flight, even if it's a short plane ride from Amsterdam to Barcelona. That is how I ended up where I am today, dear guests. I woke up bright and early, ate breakfast, made coffee and off I was, on my way to Schiphol airport in a secondhand denim skirt and a backpack for the week. I'm writing to you now from my Notes app on my phone, due to the unforeseen circumstances of my backpack's size limits and thus, lack of a laptop. I love typing on a keyboard. I've been using computers since I was around 11 years old; typing comes as naturally to me as speaking.

Today, I’m off to visit one of my best friends, Sofia, who I met for the first time in 2019 during my first Amsterdam stint. We were colleagues and lived in the same neighborhood for a year, with nothing to lose and the world to gain. I stayed in that first full-time job for three years, bouncing between Amsterdam and Rotterdam.

I arrived in the Netherlands on August 25th, 2015. I remember because it was a week to the day of my first day of school at EUR. I was 18 and had never visited Rotterdam before, had never planned to move abroad to the Netherlands until about 2 months prior to my arrival. I had faraway memories of this country from conversations I had with my dad as a child, scrunching my nose and proclaiming I could never live in such a distant country, where nothing I found interesting ever happened. (The joke’s on me, lol). After a frantic google search back in Venezuela, EUR was the best option for my communications career to start, the most affordable. The years in Rotterdam went by in a flash; I was suddenly 22 and in Amsterdam.

Amsterdam in the winter: snow, bycicles, typical canal houses and a frozen canal.

My first chapter in Amsterdam was fraught with loneliness and a bout of the Blue Period (my way of saying I was probably a bit depressed). The first winter in Amsterdam was particularly grueling. In hindsight, there were several reasons for that: 1. I worked a highly stressful, underpaid job with a manipulative employer, 2. I was the only person I knew working full-time post university, 3. All my friends remained in Rotterdam. I felt isolated, disconnected and disillusioned. 

At the time, Amsterdam represented charm, beauty, and energy, yet felt inaccessible, unaffordable, distant. After a string of misfortunes that year, I was not keen on continuing my residency in the capital. I had to build a sense of self in the world in a very isolated time, and I re-started therapy, navigating it as well as a 22-year-old could.

Then the pandemic hit, locking us all in. I left Amsterdam in May 2020, relief washing over me when I found a room in Rotterdam, €300 cheaper a month, just behind the central station. In comparison, I lived in the suburbs of Amsterdam Noord, a 30-minute bike ride from anywhere, exacerbating my feelings of isolation. I was desperate to leave Amsterdam. I swore I would never go back, leaving my feelings of claustrophobia, anger and sadness behind. In late 2021, all my uni friends made a mass migration to the capital, encouraging me to visit. I remember a friend posing an interesting thought: maybe I could make new memories and redefine my relationship to the city. I begrudgingly accepted her optimistic outlook. 

By September 2022, I left that dreaded job and started my own one-woman company. The world was mine to gain all over again. I began toying with the idea of returning to Amsterdam with a more solid sense of self and a more grounded spirit. Despite this change of heart, I will always be thankful for those in-between Rotterdam years. It was where I became more of myself, fell in young, teenage love for the first time, got my heart broken and first experienced growing pains.

A sunset from an Amsterdam canal view: summer in Amsterdam is gorgeous.

Then there was Amsterdam, a place that felt alien, that made me remember everything I lacked. That first year was confronting as one of those years in your early 20s, where every feeling feels permanent. It showed me my insecurities, attachments and expectations, but it also showed me resiliency and self-knowledge. Returning to Rotterdam was an act of self love. Yet when last fall came around and my needs changed, I changed with them again; off I went to Amsterdam.

That September, one of my friends texted me - a room in their rent-controlled, 3-person flat opened up, a beautiful house in Oud-West. The possibility of moving while retaining my self-employed freedom was very high. So I took it, and in the process, followed one of those divine signs that life gives us: when what we want aligns with what we need. By October 2nd, I was settled in. Everything felt surreal and strange and sudden, but also calm, knowing, fitting.

I've learned to sharpen my intuition over the years, to listen to its discerning voice. It was telling me: this is good. You will be rooted here again, you will be challenged, you will be uncomfortable. You will expand. 

Since then, I’ve had dating misadventures, flew to visit my mom in her new home in the States in the fall, stayed in Venezuela for the winter, and was faced with unimaginable grief in the spring. Now it is summertime, and I just started a part-time job at a vintage store. It's amazing, I tell my friends. I feel my age. In the paperwork, hope and effort that immigration entails, I would take myself extremely seriously. And how couldn't you, when your success is the only way you get to stay in the country you call home? Now, I get to feel like a 20-something year old who's doing a side job to pay the bills while she pursues her greatest love, her first passion: writing. I get to build my career and have the time to write and write and write. And I've been doing it all while rehoming myself in Amsterdam. 

For these reasons, Amsterdam now represents a myriad of possibilities, of the potential of a million lives. It is where I now feel free to lose myself and find my way back. It is where I've been uncomfortable, frustrated, angry, but also joyful, expansive, independent. More free. It’s a place where I can be more playful, stay true to myself, and take a path that feels right to me.  In the sea of Amsterdammers living a million lives, I’ve become a million shapes with them, too.

I came back from a month in London this late June, taking a breath of fresh air, feeling peace. Noticing the peace and the feeling of home as I took the tram home, the city buzzing around me, the calm. 

Yesterday I rang up some purchases for a customer at the vintage store, she asked me where I was from. "Oh, you come from far!" Yes, I said, I do, and I laugh. And then she said something that I'd never heard before, even if it's been there, silently and implicitly, for a little while. "You come from far, but this is also your home. This is your home." 

It is.

♒︎

Clement Affin is a digital comms specialist. When she’s not doing doing that, she’s agonizing over what it means to be a person in the 21 century.