No One Told Me It Would Feel Like This
Unspoken Conversations, No. 1
“Through The Water” - oil on linen
I never thought I’d leave Slovenia.
Not really. I was the director of a local TV station, surrounded by girlfriends I met when I was twenty-one. We knew each other’s heartbreaks, borrowed each other’s clothes, danced until we couldn't feel our feet, and sat for hours around tables with wine-stained lips and the kind of laughter that only comes when you feel rooted.
That kind of life doesn’t ask for more. It tells you this is enough. And for a while, it was.
But then a quiet friendship grew with a man I met in Sarajevo in 2019 — an American. We were both there for work. It was a respectful and slow relationship, mostly via emails, with questions like, “How are you?”. But something about it made my soul tilt in his direction. A year passed. And then, I followed him.
I packed up everything I knew — my language, my people, my certainty — and stepped into a country where nothing made sense. Where I couldn’t even explain who I was in the language everyone else used. I somehow knew, but indeed I didn’t know then, that it wouldn’t be the last time I moved. Or that I would live in several countries before settling in the States. I just knew I was leaving my home country.
And no one told me it would feel like this. Not like a movie. Not like a fresh start. But like standing barefoot on a new floor, wondering if I’m allowed to call it home.
I thought the hardest part would be the leaving. But it was what came after: Losing your voice in translation. Feeling invisible in a place that doesn’t know how to see you. Becoming someone new while still holding hands with who you used to be.
I think about that version of me often. The one who left everything, not with certainty, but with hope. She wasn’t fearless, but she listened anyway. She listened to her intuition - that voice that was so silent but so persistent.
That’s what I want to tell you, if you’re standing at the edge of a change: You don’t have to feel ready. You don’t have to be brave. You just have to listen when something inside you whispers, This way.
This story inspired one of the works in my upcoming collection “Connection.” You’ll soon be able to see how these stories live in color and form.