Life in the Cruel City

Around five in the evening, when the sun was beginning to dip, I often found myself cooking while crying. Somewhere between the death wish of depression and the survival instinct of hunger, my life clung to the edge of both.

One of my go-to “survival meals” was pasta.
When I first arrived in Germany, the only things I knew how to cook were ramyeon and fried eggs. I kept every kind of pasta in my cupboard and survived on tomato or cream sauce for days on end.

I’d boil way too much at once, and the end product was always overcooked on the outside, undercooked in parts, and altogether bland. Just like how I felt back then: a sad, clumpy bowl of proof that I was barely managing.

Another survival food was pork and cheese.
I used to throw random things into the grocery basket like pork cuts I didn’t know how to cook and shredded pizza cheese. The pork always released too much water, came out dry and tough, and the cheese did nothing to help.

I’d eat in silence, in a house too empty and too wide for one person. And I’d think: If I died right here, right now, no one would even notice I was gone.

Even in broad daylight, the sunlight barely came through my small window, always blocked by the building across. And on one of the rare days I tried to let some light in, I caught someone watching me from that window. The kind of dehumanizing gaze that felt a little too familiar.

It was one of those stares I received on campus, or when I wandered between buildings scattered across the city. Those eyes looked at me as if I were a monkey in a cage. Existing purely for their pleasure.

For the first year I spent in Germany, I don’t think I was ever allowed to live like a human being at all.

On a winter day, I once stepped out to empty the trash in just a blanket — forgetting my keys and phone — and came back to a locked door. No one answered the bell. When I moved into a new house, I overheard the landlord couple talking, assuming I was a prostitute, not a student. In the supermarket, someone once shouted, “Go back to your country!” And only a week into a class I had looked forward to, someone greeted me with “Ni hao.”

I was powerless in those moments.
And slowly, they drained all the softness out of me.

After that one and a half years, I learned to be someone who didn’t quite exist. I learned to not smile on the street, to keep walking without making eye contact, not to remember faces or names, to trust no one, and to stop trying to belong.

It wasn’t a full life, but at least I didn’t have to feel like I’m an animal.

Before, I used to fear lack of money or knowledge.
But now, I fear something else:
That I’ll get used to pain. That I’ll settle into it.
That I’ll lower my value to match other people’s gazes, fear what’s ahead, and lose all hope for my future.
That I’ll spend every day measuring my life against someone else’s, quietly weighing the amount of my suffering.

Just like I did back in that city.
When a few cruel words or small acts of animosity were enough to soak my pillow in silence, night after night.