In search of true freedom-chronicles of my everyday struggels and small victories, for now in the Big Apple.
I am a 39-year-old clinical health psychologist, lifestyle medicine practitioner, science communication expert, and multi-book author. Currently, I am writing my dissertation as the world’s first candidate in Medical Futures.
I come from Budapest, Hungary. For a long time, I had been contemplating moving abroad, but it wasn’t until last year-after my old souldog passed away-that I finally decided the time had come.
Since then, I’ve traveled a lot, trying to find the place where I truly want to live. I’ve been to Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Italy, Switzerland, Germany and France, always looking at each place through the lens of What would it be like to live here? What would I do here?
The problem is, I want everything at once. I want cold winters with snow, but also hot summers filled with the scent of sunscreen. I crave both complete solitude and silence, as well as the pulse and chaos of the city.
I want deep rest, but also to push myself to total exhaustion. I want to disappear, dissolve, and blend into the background, but at the same time, I want to see and be seen, to make an impact. And above all, I want to explore, because unfortunately, I get bored of everything far too quickly.
As an adult, I was diagnosed with ADHD and severe anxiety, something that, in hindsight, explains a lot.
I wasn’t planning the trip to New York, I somehow randomly ended up in a group of strangers and come to visit, without any intention of moving here. I was just coming for ten days. And then, well, I got screwed because I fell in love. Not just with the city, but also with a guy I happened to meet on my very last day here. Ok, with him, I wish I had never met, but that’s another story.
So far, New York seems to be the perfect fit for somebody who wants everything but doesn’t really want anything enough.
Join me, let’s figure out together if NY is a destination or just an other station in my life, on my journey to find my freedom, true love, and a little bit of self-acceptance.
I hope that by sharing my story with you, it might soften the weight of my relentless, aching loneliness 7073 kilometers far from my friends and family, and maybe ease yours too. What I’ve learned in 16 years as a practicing psychologist, it’s this no matter who we are, whether in a relationship, married, single, young, or old… we are all f@cking alone. Even when we’re not.
If there’s one thing I truly know, it’s how to weave words into meaning. So let’s connect through them.
And by connect, I mean truly connect, not the usual social media b@llshit way.
I promise I won’t only show the shiny parts. You’ll see it all, the ugly, the boring, and the happy moments too. And more often than not, you’ll meet two wonderful but crazy australian shepherds, the only loves in my life I can say for sure will last a lifetime.
What a beautiful, small piece of safety it is to be blessed with that, to have someone in my chaotic, unsettled, curious, but mostly terrifying little life. Someone who stays.
So, what do you think, are you ready? Shall we?
The heat in New York is brutal. Humid. It literally feels like the sun is burning my skin off. I’ve never owned an AC in my life, I’ve always been very climate-conscious. A Dyson Cool fan was enough for me, even during Budapest summers, which are no joke either.But this?
I wrote that you won’t just get the sparkle here. I write the truth, not just the real. Reading back my old posts, there’s so much pain in them. But always, always, there’s defiance.That just watch me energy. That I-will-show-you strength. Even the words I wrote on the darkest, saddest nights still
I came for love, full of faith and hope, and this love made me forget what I was leaving behind.Then the love turned into harm – cruel, drying, destructive – and I didn’t even have the chance to grieve my old life, because I was literally fighting to survive, on
I’m about to share something deeply personal with you, something I haven’t written for anyone else, really, because in truth, it started as a letter to myself. A kind of gift, from me to me. Because the worst part of the trauma I went through, and I say “went through”
The other day I ended up in an interesting conversation, someone asked me if I was ashamed of being Hungarian. I suppose they were referring to the political situation, the fact that there hasn’t been real democracy in my country for a long time, only in name. Our prime minister
From the outside, I’ve probably never seemed this open, friendly, and outgoing before. I could say that I love the person New York is turning me into. I’m discovering a kinder, more approachable version of myself. Same sarcasm on the inside, but without the resting bitch face- in fact, even
A quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln says:“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”And I’m really living that right now, because that’s exactly what’s happening in my life. This is a time of quiet preparation for me, where I
I had a plane ticket for today, NY to Budapest.But instead of being at the airport, I’m sitting on the floor in front of my brand new full-length mirror,surrounded on both sides by dogs, each of them chewing away on some miracle toy I ordered from Amazon, which, according to
I have a theory.Life has proven it to be true countless times, and yet I keep running into it again and again. I don’t know if it’s ever happened to you that someone just randomly walks into your life, someone you barely know, and yet it feels like they’ve always
Maybe ten people read this blog. One of them is my best friend, another is one of my dad, probably with the help of some translation software. And that’s fine. I’m not quite ready to put this out into the world in a bigger way. Whoever finds it, finds it.
hello@restlessnewyorker.us