Carolin Würfel, a writer born in the former East Germany, reflects on turning 40 and the experience of living between fronts—geographical, political, and personal. She finds solace on the Princes' Islands off Istanbul, where the in-between becomes a place of clarity rather than limbo.
The weight of 40
Statistically, half her life is behind her. For many millennials, 40 is a terrifying number, because no matter how you bend it, 40 is not the new 30. Weeks before her birthday, her best friend called to check in. “You ready?” she asked. Würfel replied with a shaky “Yes,” hoping the new decade would be calmer and less of a dance in the in-between.
Over the past years, especially the second half of her 30s, her life has felt defined by transition: leaving a marriage, moving alone from Berlin to Istanbul with two suitcases, starting over professionally and privately. She thought of this as a temporary condition, as if she would eventually “arrive” somewhere stable once the dust settled. It has, and it hasn’t.
Not feeling in control
Würfel recalls thinking that people turning 40 were proper adults—they had their lives under control. The reality: she does not feel in control most of the time. Questions circle: Why am I not further ahead? Why isn’t my bank account fuller? Why haven’t I bought a house? Should I have stayed married? She knows these thoughts are common, but they persist.
The in-between is supposed to be a waiting room, not a life. But she no longer believes that. She asks, “Don’t we all move, always, between fronts?”
A spontaneous move to the island
At the end of last year, she moved from the European side of Istanbul to one of the Princes’ Islands in the Marmara Sea. They belong officially to the city but feel entirely their own, sitting in the middle of the water between Europe and Asia. From there, you can see both sides of Istanbul—its skyline clear on some days, hidden behind fog on others. You are part of the city and you are not.
The decision was spontaneous: a sudden offer from an acquaintance to take over an affordable apartment. Doubts arrived once she was there—would living on an island make the feeling of in-between even heavier? She needn’t have worried. She has never loved a place as much.
Finding peace in the in-between
A group of friends came over by ferry for a lazy Sunday. Before sunset, they sat on a cliff looking out over the sea and talked about what they would let go of with the disappearing light. Würfel said “aradayım” – I am in-between – and that she wanted to stop wrestling with it, this feeling of not being stable. Because in-between is a place, too. One that allows her to see in multiple directions at once.
She connects this to her upbringing as a former GDR citizen. Like the novelist Christa Wolf, she was caught between two systems after German reunification. She understood early that you cannot simply dissolve the in-between; to erase the distance between two sides would mean erasing the histories that created it. Yet we are taught to experience this as failure.
Whenever she is in Germany, people ask how much longer she will stay “over there.” In Turkey, they struggle to understand why a German would be in Istanbul. There is an implication that her in-between life is a strange adventure that will eventually end when she chooses one side. But she no longer believes that.
On her actual birthday, her best friend called and asked if she felt different. She laughed and said: “No, I feel the same. In-between, as always. Because it is in-between that our lives are lived.” She concludes that Christa Wolf knew that all along. “I had to become 40.”
