On October 1st I set myself to an experience I thought frankly it was going to last my lifetime. The feeling of leaving Lima and landing in Barcelona, overtook my fear of flying over the Andes, and the extense Atlantic ocean. This fear of planes in general also determined that I was not going to go back to Lima, that if I was to see my family it would be in Spain or somewhere in between, where the 11-hour flight would not even be thought as a possibility.
Its been a year, and I am about to move to my seventh room in Barcelona. Yes, seventh. And all I can think of is; why did I pack all my possible new experiences. Dresses for weddings, needle heels for fancy concerts at Palau de la Musica, a 1920's esque robe for? And while the number of times I have changed rooms is pretty impressive, the amount of stuff I have that is stored in the darkness under my bed hits the bar high too for making decisions without much of rational thought.
With the unnecessary weight on the upcoming move, this is what took my pisces-self a year to learn:
Don't get blinded by illusions.
I love you Barcelona but I don't know how much our relationship will last, and if I told myself a lifetime, that would overwhelm me, as if anyone in a new relationship.
The first few months of enchantment are gone, and what do you find? Reality. You find that Barcelona (in this case) is not so instragram-perfect of course, and how your emotional life and tastes really respond to it. If someone was to ask me about my personal opinion with Barcelona now, the answer would be quite different from eight months ago.
I see cities as onions? With many layers, in this case, each very different. The outer layer consists of the physical aspects and as you start seeing the layers underneath, you discover within each, new people, experiences, success, defeats... Where your way of being effects unintentionally your experience with the city.
Finally, I have come to a comprehensive stage of my experience in Barcelona that benefits me emotionally. I don't know how long I will be here, and that's okay. And if I decide that by next year I don't want to be here, that is okay as well. I mean this thought makes everything much more holistic... even if the uncertainty may bring small doses of anxiety at times.
I know I have a stable home in my hometown of Lima, that the possibilities are still out there for me anywhere else, and that I am far from glueing myself to Barcelona yet.
To my twenty-one-year-old self, restless, with the dream of finding my dream job and prince charming here, chill. You should have left all the fancy theatrical garments back home, and bring them once you have your own permanent home, wherever. The eleven-hour plane trip to pick them up would have been a much more exciting experience, than the short but extremely heavy trip to yet another new temporary household, with limited space.
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