“I will totally die here in Umeå”

Sharing with you what this sentence means to me

“What a strange thing to say…” you might think. Is it really truly so strange?

Every time I say it, oftentimes it’s in a funny situation, I say it as a joke and people laugh. Still, all of us know that I mean it seriously, with all my heart & soul.

I recently had someone telling me that it is a very powerful sentence, she never heard anyone say that & that she is happy to hear it from me (Thanks Ola ;-) ).

This made me think more about it and I decided to write it out of my system and share it with you.

So why do I say it? Or more importantly: why do I feel I will die in Umeå?

Before I start answering that, I would like to clarify something else: I do not mind speaking about death, I do not fear to die either. My own death is nothing that scares me or makes me feel uncomfortable, I am rather curious about what exactly happens afterwards and I have certain feelings and theories about it ;-).

This doesn’t mean that I am immune to people I love dying, I am quite aware that it will be devastating when it happens, I will try my best to handle the emotions as well as possible.

But now back to why I feel that I will die in Umeå:

When I visited Umeå for the first time, it was during my Master thesis, when my supervisor send me here to do certain experiments in a lab of a collaborator. I came around midsummer in June and stayed for two weeks.

I remember that I immediately fell in love with the nature, the peace and freedom I felt, the city and just everything I experienced in these two weeks. The day I landed back in Germany, I realized that I craved to be back in Umeå again, that I have visited a very special place.

Not long after that, I started to plan to get back to Umeå to do my PhD there. And this plan worked out perfectly! I was taken as a PhD student in the same lab I worked with during my masters, they accepted me and I came back 1.5 years later, for a PhD of 5 years.

The feeling that kept on being inside of me was a feeling of belonging, a type of groundedness and calmness, an innate connection that I had with this place on earth. It was independent of weather I was doing my PhD, unemployed planning to set up my company, running my company, being in a relationship or being single: this feeling never changed. No external circumstance was able to change what I felt about it inside.

I might have gotten to Umeå because of my master thesis project, but the connection to this place on earth was not really bound to anything but me and “it”, no matter the circumstances.

I feel at complete peace and freedom here. I feel safe, secure, connected and at one with everything here, the nature, the trees, the seasons, the waters, the forests, the animals, also the people and my social circle that I built with time.

There is a certain type of magic here, something deeply captivating and keeping me connected to it. I have never felt so home anywhere else.

And these are basically the reasons why I feel, think and can imagine that I will die here. Because I feel so good about it, I have the feeling that my life is supposed to be lived here.

The thing is: I don’t have to live here, I could move wherever else I want to as my job allows for that. I just do not want to do that, but I like to have the freedom of choice. I am happy to keep this as my stable base and travel from here when needed.

And because of all that, I feel that saying “I will die here in Umeå” is not such a strange thing to say. It comes very naturally to me, it never came up at any other spot on earth.

I do feel happy about it, because I know that I am not restlessly looking for something where I feel home, safe and secure. I don’t feel the need to frantically explore and visit the newest & most trendy and “in” places to live, I don’t need to thrive for something because I have found that something already, or maybe rather, it has found me:

this tiny place in the North of Sweden, called Umeå, in the middle of the Arctic, at the sea, close to many lakes, with its own river, with wild nature and forests around and a pureness that is exceptional. How could I not want to spend my life here till my death comes along?

I truly love you my chosen home Umeå!

Love,
Daria 💚

#Umeå #home #safe #arctic #death