I live in possibly one of the prettiest parts of my barrio, Caballitos. While most people in this city live in crowded apartments, I’m in a big old house that is full of windows and the sort of sounds only well-worn homes make- like the way the steps up from the staircase’s landing always creak and the doors knobs always squeak.
Walking around my neighborhood at night is peaceful. Fall has caused the leaves begin to fall and the way they flutter in the streetlights makes me think Buenos Aires is playing up its “Paris of the South” side.
There is a house around the corner that I especially like. The patio has Mexican tile and there are vines running up along its walls. It looks like something taken from the part of my head that stores up the images my mind gets when I read Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novels. I want to buy my tiled palace so I can stay here in Buenos Aires forever. I am happy to dream of having my own place quiet enough to write and sketch and mess around with paint and canvas but still be close to my cafes, parks, bookstores, and only doors down from Claudia and Eduardo so I could keep taking tango lessons and wandering off to milongas whenever my gringa feet fancy.
I’ve always been a daydreamer. I’m always planning and thinking and wondering what the future holds. Adventures and plans are mapped out in my mind a million different times and I travel through them when my mind has moments to wander- in the subte, on the bus, or at night. Yet, a good deal of the time there is a bit of fear wrapped around what it is I think I want. I get scared I won’t get to go all the places I want to go. Instead of hopeful I feel tense and want to selfishly guard them.
When I get like this, more moody than usual and “emo” (as one friend described me in this state), I think about going home. I have to confess I am a little bit homesick. I’m greedy for emails and skype dates. I feel forgotten easily these days and more far-away than usual- as if I am suddenly further down below in the southern hemisphere than I was before.
The fact that I am missing summer makes me even more wistful. I have been thinking about the way the wind blows through the field in the summer, the grass growing tall, and the tractors mowing it down again. I want dragonflies and raspberries. I crave string beans and zucchini from Mr. McDonald’s garden. I feel like breakfast on the porch and morning swims. I want to be home as the eight of us begin to congregate and return to 175 Sykes Road.
People tend to think I do not get homesick. I find this understandable as I used to pretend I was incapable of such a feeling. But the truth is that I used to get nervous going to friends’ houses for the night and waited almost everyday at camp till I was safe in my sleeping bag with the lights turned out to cry. In Jamaica, I taped pictures of my family on the cement walls of the church classroom we were sleeping in even though it was a mere two weeks. When I went to the DR I felt sick to my stomach at the thought of staying there for six whole weeks. In my fifteen year old mind they stretched out like an eternity.
Janet can attest to the fact that I was aching to leave Gordon this December and sleep away the winter in my own iron-framed bed. I smiled happily as Austin piled Janet and me into her car to make the long drive home to the North Country from Wenham once exams were finally over. Books, clothes, and college things stacked and crammed every which way possible and me- giddy with excitement at the thought of going home for Christmas. I’m surprised we didn’t fall out in a heap when, like the good little New Englanders we’ve learned to be, we stopped at “Dunks” for the much needed sustenance one finds in coffee, bagels, and munchkins.
But before I knew it, my extended Christmas break was over and I was cramming my massive Oxford Spanish dictionary into my suitcase and dramatically playing “Another Suitcase, Another Hall” from Evita on my itunes. It was time to leave again. I felt funny as déjà-vu leaving moments played out familiarly: the drive through the mountains to NYC, trying to calm my stomach in attempts to enjoy the time in the city with family and friends, and the unsatisfying airport time before boarding the flight.
The thing is, I always hate leaving and I then I always hate leaving wherever it is I left home to go to. Life is funny that way. But being homesick isn’t- this yearning for the known makes me feel misplaced and being misplaced makes me feel vulnerable. I hate that word, by the way. It is a word people always use when they want you to tell them things- deep things, private things; it implies being honest and being weak. I do not like vulnerable. Open is one thing but susceptible runs over lines I used to think were much more carefully drawn. But the truth is, I am vulnerable. And I am weak. I get anxious about things easily and am sensitive. I analyze and stay up with my thoughts at night.
As it always is when you go somewhere new, or take hard courses, or step outside the norms, you begin to learn. Sometimes you learn wonderful things, like Spanish, the vos tense, and tango. You also meet amazing people who will begin to love you. You can live life here, in Argentina, or wherever it is you went so very far to reach. This once-foreign life begins to feel permanent and constant. New and unknown becomes a relatively known and even comfortable reality.
But there are also hard things to learn, like who you find yourself without the safe walls of your school or the hands of the people who know you best and love you most to hold. You might not know how you are being shaped or you might not know how to respond to every aspect of the experience.
Structures you thought were concrete start to fall like sand castles. What you thought was of the heart might turn out to be cultural and constructed. Beliefs, whether political or spiritual, easily look irrelevant when held up against a different light. That is not to say that one finds truth when outside the familiar or that one knows to be truth is not true. However, every aspect of your being has more potential to be stretched and challenged to the limits. Doubt and fear find easier footing within one’s mind when one is, yes, vulnerable.
When you think you’ve lost what you found to be the most valuable parts of your life, you grieve. It is possible to be sad or even depressed in cities as lovely and as interesting as Buenos Aires. What you lose can be what makes you feel misplaced and then homesick.
Mostly I want people who know me. I want them because I love them and I miss them but there is an ulterior motive- I want them to tell me who I am. I want all this hard work of finding out what my identity is and where it lies to be done for me. I want instant assurance that I am okay and that I am living my life “right.”
However, affirmation is not going to provide me with anything lasting. It is only a temporary assurance and not necessarily an honest one. I forget sometimes that they haven’t been here with me the entire time. We relate to each other as we always have but somehow the interaction is different because I am here and they are in places relatively unknown (home changes a good deal in months and years) or in other new completely unknown places. So we get each other but we don’t get it all anymore because each of our perspectives is strongly influenced by the very different and varied worlds around us. That’s okay but when you want to know that the world you live in isn’t crazy, it is not necessarily welcomed.
These are all relatively scary and frightening discoveries and I have found myself easily burdened and weighed down by them. Yet, when I really look closely I realize that they are the same worn out struggles, familiar doubts, and old questions that I have carried for the past few years. If I do not like what I see it is just because I see it here in a harsher light. I am forced to evaluate. I have started to process aspects and parts of my life that have felt so natural and instinctual I forgot they required attention and understanding.
So as low as this missing and questioning makes me feel, I have recently become to the conclusion that it is good. Not because this is in and of itself is good but because I am dealing with it and as I have begun to, the fear and anxiety have slowly started to fade.
I am headed towards another new place, a place that does not require leaving. I am heading towards something deeper and personal than I have yet known- a place more profound than dreams. I am not there yet but I am confident I will be. I am grateful because I think the real journey starts here.
