It is the same place I couldn’t wait to leave, the same city I sometimes dreaded coming back to. But somehow this time the sun shines brighter, the sky is of a more vibrant blue, the heat is more tolerable, and every corner seems quaint.
If it is seeing my family after the pandemic, or the fact I have been on the outside for about six years now, I don’t know, but I have found myself romanticizing this place. Have I been wrong all along? Did I really have to leave?
I try to find a rational explanation for feeling this way. Perhaps I am far too old to feel the same insecurities as I did a couple years ago; maybe I have learnt to appreciate the Brightside after being submerged in afternoons where the sun sets down at 4 PM (both, literally and figuratively), maybe I have started feeling what expats usually feel many years before I did: a longing for home. The answers, I certainly do not have yet.
The feeling is at time peaceful, at times anxious. Peaceful when my heart is resting, and I feel like I am where I want to be. Anxious when I start remembering and trying to make sense of the places and people I knew, trying to speak about them in an attempt to save them from oblivion. Sometimes I even doubt the images I have in my mind of demolished houses that turned into buildings, restaurants and party venues that have continued to close, leaving their corners isolated. As my 30’s approach, the canvas of my childhood is still within reach, although I cannot grasp it as easily as I would like anymore.
I am not going to lie: in the last 6 days, I have wondered what my life would have been if I had stayed, or what it would become if I came back. Some parts of it seem alluring, but while things feel utterly familiar, I feel so foreign in this place and I don’t know if there would be room for me in here. The outside looking in is the perfect way to describe it.
Nevertheless, I remind myself that it was my dreams that took me in a different direction. The goals I achieved -and the ones I am yet to set- were in fact the foundation I am standing on now that allows this reality to be more feasible, more enjoyable. It had to be this way; I keep telling myself. All I know is every time goodbyes are harder, coming back to the ever-changing reality is more puzzling and time flies by way faster. The younger generations of my family have left, ripping apart the dream where we gathered every Sunday with grandparents and cousins to play and later, discuss all aspects of the universe.
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