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 breaking free from an eight-year-long, paralyzing, and abusive relationship-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?
I keep coming across this trend on TikTok and Instagram, a girl just standing there, staring into the camera, while this line pops up in the background: “What am I supposed to be afraid of? I packed 20 years into a single 23 kilo suitcase.” Moments like this make me feel
My newly built connection with the people of New York slowly, very slowly restores my faith in humanity. Just gratitude. My heart is overflowing. How come in all the noise and chaos I found this.
So, remember when I said in a previous post that everything I was afraid of has already happened? Well, I might’ve been exaggerating a bit. Turns out, I’m basically more like Steve Jobs, there’s always “one more thing.” I came to New York the way most people probably do, full
The most-asked question I face nowadays is how my two aussies, Eliott and Ellise, made it from Budapest to New York. Well… in short? Through a brutal bureaucratic nightmare.For anyone in the same boat, planning to relocate their pups to the US, I highly recommend starting that early. You’ll need the time.
There’s this app where you meet 5 strangers. I went to one of these events the other night, it was an interesting experience. It’s important for me to be able to generate genuine curiosity about people, even if they’re not my patients, because unfortunately i had troubles with that for
Some people asked me why I spent so much money just to bring my dog with me when I moved to New York from Budapest. As if he were just a dog. As if their life and our bond could be measured in money. I could have left without them, I
OH my God, there are TWO of them. Back in Hungary I often walk my dogs separately, not only because I know they need their one-on-one time with me, but also because I don’t want the little one picking up Eliott’s belief that the world is a terrifying, dangerous place
Many people regret the things they didn’t do because they were too scared. But me? I’m the complete opposite. The more scared I am of something, the more I feel like I have to do it. It gets me to some pretty dumb situations. I rarely regret not doing something;
As a therapist, I have the privilege of engaging in truly honest, meaningful, and deep connections through words in my conversations with my patients. I experience a similar kind of deep, genuine, though purely imagined connection with my readers through the pages of my books. Through my words, I reach
I feel like I’m floating between two lives, no longer part of the old, but not quite in the new yet. It’s a strange, uncertain place, where nothing and nobody feels solid or safe. But then there’s them, my two rocks, my two dogs, arrived after me just yesterday. They
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