A very popular phrase, and one I used quite frequently when abroad, is "home is where the heart is." Simple, endearing, vague.
People would ask if I ever got homesick, and my answer was always a smiling but firm, no. I missed the sunshine, I missed my bed, I missed my dog, and occasionally I missed my family, but home? My actual house? I never saw the reason behind missing something that would always be there. No matter how far I went, my home in San Diego would always be exactly on the same longitude and latitude, it wasn't going anywhere. I was free to roam with confidence while my home remained, waiting for my return, perhaps not in the same way as I left it but close. But that's not what this post is about really. It's about creating a new home, leaving a piece of my heart far from my house in San Diego. But again, I haven't quite reached my point.
After leaving my heart, soul and adventures in Uppsala, Sweden I returned home, to readjust, reevaluate and recommence reality. Needless to say, things were not the same. As I lived abroad for a year, searching, exploring and changing, things at home did as well. I began to realize how deeply a place affects, influences, changes, grips you, but only once one leaves that beloved place can the affects be seen and truly felt. But then again, the affects become even more pronounced when a return trip takes place. I loved home, I left home. I loved Sweden, I left Sweden. I returned home and reconnected with it, exploring all the nooks and crannies I used to visit.
But what about my return to Sweden? Or should I ask when? My 3 year anniversary of when I began that journey is swiftly approaching and it makes me ponder. When do I return? When do I solidify the fact that I was actually there? That the dream was actually real? Because right now, as my memories slowly lose their vividness, I feel disconnected from what I experienced, saw, touched, smelled, ate, drank, climbed, swam, walked, kissed; maybe it really was a dream.
Even thinking about returning to a place that has deeply affected me - emotionally, spiritually, physically, mentally, subconsciously - that has changed me inside and out makes me nervous, smile and want to cry. Everyday I relive those 11 months in certain flashbacks, sparked by blue, cloudless skies, hot dogs on the grill, puddles at dusk, sunburns, wondering was I really there? I do watch the Travel Channel on somewhat of a daily basis, maybe it has infiltrated my thoughts, maybe I made it all up. But no, only one flip through my scrapbook and I can confirm my presence in Europe.
I did walk the busy streets of London, look out over the Seine from the platform of the Eiffel Tower to the banks of Montmartre, pray amongst the polished marble in St. Peters Basilica, set a flower on a grave at Sauchenhausen, drink a beer (or 2) in a Scottish pub, gaze at an original Van Gogh in Amsterdam, sing from a mountain in Salzburg, found a home in Uppsala. And someday I will experience it all again, obviously in a very different manner, and be changed once more, transforming continuously into the person I am meant to be. But man, I can't even fathom it, that return trip. Standing in front of the Notre Dame and feeling deja vu. Snapping a photo of the Barcelona coastline and comparing it to that first trip, the one I took 10, 20, 50 years before. Taking the train across Switzerland and knowing some people will never see these landscapes in their lifetime. Watching the sun never set on the horizon in Sweden and feeling at home. My heart beats faster thinking about those past adventures, and quickens its pace even more thinking about the future and that ever so mysterious return journey.
