Old notes on moving cities, countries and continents

These are old notes I found on moving, mostly written during in my first semester of my Master's degree (aka the first time I actually moved away from home :) Needless to say they are emphatic, even a wee bit dramatic).

Moving is realizing that you will miss many milestones and occasions. You may not have been fully present even when you were there but you didn't realize absence is so hard.

Moving is the occasional burn with no ointment to deal with it.

Moving is learning to love Skype.

Moving is learning to speak truthfully to people; there doesn't seem to be the time for nuances and reading microexpressions.

Moving is waking up on a lazy Saturday morning with a vicious heartburn, tears leaking out of your unwillingly closed eyes, wishing you had woken up in your bed, in your home. It is wishing that all the loud noisy people in this place you call home were your family.

Moving is taking every piece of home you find floating about, in other people, in food, and storing it deep within you, so that when the dark days are here, you can pull them out and triumphantly say, but look, I have a home, I belong. It doesn't work but you still do it. What choice do you have.

Moving is heartbreak in slow motion.

Moving is the start of a lifelong worry that you may die far, far away from home (and others but you block that thought even before it can form itself). It is learning painfully what home means.

Moving is insanity. I should have never moved. I should have moved earlier.

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Moving is madness; it sets you off into a perpetual crisis.

Moving makes you make new friends, it cements and fractures older friendships.

Some days moving is music and some days it is the shrill scream in your head.

It is the voice that says you must have been fucking batshit crazy.

Moving makes you fall apart, and then gather, and then hit the repeat button on this process till you think another round is absolutely impossible. Then it will start again.

Moving is sharing spaces, houses, secrets.

Moving is (for me maybe?) the secret fear of death.

Moving is crazy, crazy, crazy. Only todas locas will do it.

Moving will ask me questions every single day. You think you can silence the voices; you can’t. They will survive you.

Moving is all or nothing. You have to embrace it. And even though you will, it will shatter you, slowly but surely. Then you will put yourself together. And you will brush off the stray splinters and move on.

Someday you will stop peeking into other people’s lives; wondering what belonging feels like. Someday you will just belong. You would have moved.

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