A place called home

Barcelona. June 2018.

 

“You go away for a long time and return a different person – you never come all the way back.”  Paul Theroux

 

Finally here.
Listening to an old playlist while I walk the streets of a city that now feels so unlike home, so strange, yet reconnected for moments. 

I think about everything that’s happened in the last decade. The incredible adventures traveling, the years creating in Berlin, the love, the friendships, the art. And how a feeling told me there was something waiting for me in the other extreme of the planet. Australia was always in the back of my mind. And I still feel like something is about to happen. 
I walk and walk. Memories from the past. Hopes and dream for the future.

Time moves so fast. I missed so many things.

Nostalgia. Nevermind.

*

 

3 years gone. 

I am a stranger at home. I feel like my presence is bothering.
In a way, it’s like I never left.
I finally realize it’s not them, it’s me. I did leave, but never really came back. I’m someone else.

And the word “home”, changing through the years, now the meaning seems lost.

 

*

 

Outside café Zurich, crowded as always. I’m excited and nervous, can’t quite believe it’s finally happening. She’s inside.
I’ve recreated this moment in my head so many times through the years. My reunion with Alessia.
We hug, tears of joy. It’s been ten years.
We parted ways, both constantly moving to different countries, never founding each other in the way.

She had a great impact on my life.

Some people are like that. Beautiful, rare encounters like miracles.
You connect like you’ve known each other for years.
It won’t matter how long you are away from each other, you stay close in the distance, even if you don’t talk for months or even years. Then if you’re lucky to meet again, it is like you were never apart, you’re picking up exactly where you left. Magic.

She flew from Switzerland for a couple of days, I’m thankful. I tell her the importance and influence that meeting her had in my life. She tells me that it was beautiful seeing me evolve and bloom into the woman I am today. If only she knew words mean to me. She’s like the big sister I always wish I had.

After our goodbye the last night, I cry while I listen to some beautiful song on the night bus. People are looking. I don’t mind, I live for meaningful moments like this. 

 

“Where had he been, then? These near and nearest things, how they seem to him transformed! What magical fluff they have acquired in the meantime! He glances backward gratefully – grateful to his travels, to his severity and self-alienation, to his far-off glances and bird flights into cold heights. How good that he did not stay ‘at home’.” Nietzsche

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