I’ve never felt belonging to a fixed place, specifically.
You see, I’ve always seen myself as the green duck in a yellow pool: curly-headed, big mouth, curious about everything, including -and specially- the things I was told to just believe and not to question. Very early, around age 13, I knew that I had to move off to find my place. By my mother’s rules and – of course – the rules of the world, I still had to wait for another five years for that to happen. Either way, I was convinced that my life had to be lived somewhere else. There was no question or doubt.
For five years, I laid on the garden grass and stared at the sky, watching the moving airplanes disappearing in the distance. I gazed to their flashlights, trying to find them among the stars until they were completely out of sight. I pondered where were they going, who were the people who occupied their seats and if they were sad about their goodbyes or anxious about their destinations. And the more I wondered, the more I imagined and portrayed when my time would come and what would be my reaction. I was dreaming, but my eyes were wide open.
When the legal age arrived, I left my parents house in pursuit of an university degree. It was the final step prior to hopping on one of those planes to find my spot in the planet. I was in another city, another state, but it was still too close to everything else, still too much not like me. Not yet my own corner, per se. The three years that followed were of plans, choices and focus. I had to pick a place, start somewhere, even though it would be great to just step on a plane going anywhere for two days, so I could choose my home better. The hunt for the best option had just begun.
With the diploma in hands, no party was needed. My celebration was to be made in another level of altitude: I had a one-way ticket to Italy, which turned out later to be only my first stop. I figured that it was time to understand where I truly came from before trying to find my place in the world. “What if Italy is the answer?”, I thought. I was about to see.
Backpack on, suitcase checked: it was time to go. The butterflies in my stomach were just flying just as fast as all the planes I watched for those five years down at the green grass. My heart was pounding full of hope and excitement and I was about to witness home in full definition in a way I had never guessed before. So I thought. My goodbyes were simple, firm and full of trust in what was yet to come.
Watching the sun above the clouds and feeling it all disappear gave me a sense of fullness. All I ever knew in life: friends, family. Everything felt to me like a long gone past in a split second. I was alone in the sky while still in a full plane. There were people everywhere, but there was only me. I felt my own light shinning for the first time and I simply didn’t want to let it go.
At that moment I felt that home had come to me. And for that day, home was the way and not the destiny.
