The Berlin Road

I was standing on a dark quiet road in Berlin. It was late. I was alone.

For the first time in my adult life I wasn't running through exit strategies in my head. I wasn't mapping the space, cataloguing who was near me, calculating what could go wrong and how fast I could move if it did. I was just standing there. On a road. In the dark. In a foreign country where I spoke just enough of the language that I could get a coffee or beer and a bite to eat.

And I felt safe.

The thought that followed was almost funny in how matter of fact it was: if something happened to me here it would just be because I was a stupid tourist who wasn't paying attention. Not because of who I am. Not because of what I look like. Not because of where I come from.

At the time I registered this thought and feeling and then tucked it away and enjoyed the rest of this adventure.

That thought, I would find out later, cracked something wide open.

I grew up in Saskatchewan in the 80s and 90s as an indigenous woman. Where being seen could have real life physical consequences. You learned early to know your exits, to not draw attention, to stay small enough that you didn't become a target. That's not pessimism or paranoia, that's just how things were. You learned and adapted. The body learned what the mind sometimes couldn't articulate.

I didn't realize how deeply that was still running in me until Berlin took it away for one little moment.

Standing on that road I understood for the first time what it felt like to truly feel safe. I would slowly realize when I got home that a significant amount of what I had been carrying for almost 40 years wasn't mine originally. It was learned. Inherited. Instilled by circumstance. The realization hit me that if it could be absent in Berlin it could, maybe, be something I could work to bring home.

When I came back to Canada I had what I can only describe as an existential crisis. Seeing clearly from an outside perspective what you've been living inside all your life was disorienting. 

The process of working through this is an ongoing process. It's part of why I paint. Taking abstract thoughts and putting them into a form I can see and feel helps me work through them. It's part of why I travel now too. It's also part of why my collection "The Face of Assimilation" is coming into existence.

Travel doesn't fix anything. But it gives you the distance to finally see it.

Jackie