before barcelona, istanbul had me so drained it felt like i was just... disappearing. and i want to be careful how i say this, because it wasn't a rough patch, it was UNSAFE, and not in the emotional or mental way people usually mean when they use that word. i didn't get to sit around and hope something would change. i needed out, and freelancing was the only door that was open.
not the romantic kind you see on threads about location independence. i'm talking locked in your room, grinding just to survive, the kind you do when there is no plan b and you know it. social media management, for whoever would pay me, at whatever they'd pay. that year just about broke me. survival mode every damn day, i worked until there was nothing left, sleep was not really part of the plan, and i pushed in ways i would never tell another woman to push. it was the only shot i had.
the whole thing was building a freelance income from zero, enough to try for a digital nomad visa, which is close to a miracle when you're applying from turkey. the process took most of a year. every month it felt like the dream was slipping. every month i doubled down anyway. i'm PROUD AS HELL of that girl. i also ache for her a bit, because she shouldn't have had to do all of that just to get somewhere safe.
so no, i didn't arrive in barcelona and find myself. freelancing was the lifeline. it was the only reason i got on the plane.
and here's the part that still turns my stomach a little. i prepaid 6 months of rent on a flat i had never seen. every euro i had saved, sitting in my wise account, gone in a single transfer to an agency in a city i had never lived in, for an apartment i knew from photos. i remember sending it and then just sitting there thinking, if this is a scam then that's it, there is no version of this where i come back from it. i'd had no plan b for a year and now i had no money either.
the flat was real, in the end. with a beautiful view. but i landed and it didn't feel like a new chapter at all. it felt like walking into the middle of someone else's story. i was beat. hollowed out. still hopeful in a stubborn way but scared like i'd never been. no friends, no safety net, only me and a city that had no idea i existed. it wasn't glamorous and it wasn't freeing, it was mostly just lonely, and that kind of quiet forces you to look at everything you've been outrunning, all at once, with nothing else to do.
then slowly, and i mean slowly, something shifted. barcelona didn't fix anything. what it did was stop me from having to fight my own environment just to exist. i wasn't living inside someone else's chaos anymore. i started living on my own clock. and only then did the rest of it start to make sense: the desperation, the reinvention, the community i ended up building for women, the woman i am now and the one i'm still turning into.
barcelona didn't save me. i DID that part. barcelona just gave me room to breathe, and it turns out breathing is the whole thing.
i still carry the old habits. i overwork. i slip back into burnout because it's the setting i know best. i'm unlearning it slowly and badly. i'm softer than i was. and i'm never going to stop being grateful to the version of me who did what she had to when it felt like everything was closing in.
so if you're in your own in-between right now, where it all feels impossible and you have genuinely no idea whether it gets better: i've been there. the you who gets through this season might be the exact one who builds the life you keep imagining. you're not behind. you're just rebuilding.
i'm still in it too, figuring it out as i go.
eda x
