Going Home: Part 2

It took me by surprise how easy it was to fall back into the rhythm of a place I hadn’t set foot in for almost 2 years.

Walking back from the bus station in the pre-dawn 5 AM hour with my friend—who so graciously sacrificed his sleep to ensure that I had someone waiting for me—I felt like I hadn’t missed a beat.

While we chatted—a bit drowsily—about past memories and experiences, it was so hard to believe that it had been almost two years.

My heart almost immediately fell right into rhythm with the living pulse of the city.
The same rhythm that coursed through my veins as we trekked our way—with ragged breath, I might add—up the same Castillo de Santa Barbara that I used to run up several times a week.

The same rhythm that I could feel reverberating through the speakers at the discotecas* in the oh-so-familiar barrio.

And the same rhythm that I stepped in tune with as I navigated the same streets back to my host family’s house.

Zigzagging through the familiar streets, I was inundated with so many thoughts: What if I forget how to speak Spanish? What if I get lost trying to remember where the piso* is? What if it’s not the same as before? What if we run out of things to talk about? What if? What if? What if?

Still drowning in so many thoughts, I was so distracted that I hit the wrong apartment buzzer. Great start, right?

Heart pounding in my ears, I slowly made my way up the dim stairway to piso 1C; I still couldn’t believe that this was happening. This was real—not a dream. Real.

And it was then, when my feet finally hit the top stair and my host mom came bursting through the hallway, tears in her eyes, that the reality of it all hit me for real this time. I was home.

As we passed the next four hours chatting and laughing and reminiscing and crying and smiling, I couldn’t help but think: how lucky am I that I have more than one place to call my home, that my heart belongs to more than one place?

But you see, that’s part of the problem: Everywhere I go, I leave a little piece of my heart—in some places, just a tiny fragment is left, but in others, a whole chunk is ripped out, sometimes leaving imperfectly jagged edges.

And so, as the next day and a half flew by, I began to struggle with the fact that when I boarded that bus for the nearly 12 hour journey back to my new home, that once again, I would be forced to hand over yet another piece of me—only this time, the hole remaining was even more gaping than before.

How can someone feel full or content when pieces of her heart are divided up between so many different places?

Sounds a little disheartening, right? Well don’t worry, it’s not all doom and gloom, and here’s why:
I’ve got this theory: every place I go has a piece of me, but filling those vacant places are scraps of memories, bits of experiences, shreds of new places.

Sure, they don’t all fit together perfectly to fill all of the gaps, but that’s life right?

I do know that now, with so many places etched into my heart, my being is so much more enriched than it ever was before—even before it had the gaps when it was ``technically” full.

And besides, while the empty spaces that have been torn away may bring about feelings of nostalgia, those vacant spots also remind me of how lucky I am to call so many places home.