HOMESICK

I'm missing home so much it has turned into this physical pain that takes my breath away. I feel like a part of me is missing, there is a void in me that nothing but home will fill. I feel it in my chest growing like a living thing, feeding of my memories, taking over, and at times getting numbed by the other feelings in me, but always, always, coming back to haunt me.

I get my "home fix" from Google earth. I sit at the office, (not at lunch time, shame on me), looking at the pictures and remembering the smells, and how it felt to walk through those streets, next to the mountains, by those trees and under than sun. It manages to look even more beautiful from here... So I sit at my desk, feeling this hole in my chest that scares me, because I know no amount of love, tears and pain from my part is going to make home, Home again.

I’m afraid... terrified of returning some lucky day and finding that no matter what I do, home is lost to me, now a mere moment in time that came and went, that was and isn't anymore; sweet, short and perishable and that I stubbornly held onto for no reason. I know why I’m here, home as loved and missed as it is, is a futureless place with no reachable goal, a no-end street, a... beautiful, familiar, green, 75-degrees-all year-round, no-end street.

I’m aware of the nature of our relationship, akin to that of a battered wife to her fist-ready husband, who clings to the memories of the good times when she was touched with love and care and not anger. Almost like that of a mother to her bad son, who steals from her, uses, forget and doesn't care, and the mother's love, come hail or high water, will be there, growing no matter what.

I know this, all of this, and still I miss it, the familiarity, the corners full of memories, the places I know how to get to, the stores I bought things from, the buildings I lived in, the subway that took me places, the parks in whose green springy grass I laid on, looking up at the sun through the tree branches. I miss the mountains with their uneven surface and the crisp clean air it breaths out into the valley, I miss the noisy buses and the family owned grocery stores in the ground floor of the buildings.

I miss the place I was born in, which isn't and has never been "home" but pulls at me nonetheless. The string that ties us together unbreakable. I miss the Carnival celebration in February, and the dancing, the smells, the warm rain that never drizzles and always pours, sweet to the tongue. I miss the big black ladies with their wide hips and trays full of homemade candy balanced on top of their heads, walking the streets, yelling: "Alegrias, cocadas!" Letting people know they are coming. I miss the cheap taxis, the chocolate and coffee that taste so different from the ones here, the fishes that I've never seen here, flat and fried, tasting even better when eaten by the beach, eating with your fingers, lemon juice running down your arms to your elbows, the sun mercilessly shining on you, the chilly swig of almost frozen coconut milk drunk right from it, sweet and refreshing in your tongue, down your throat.

I miss the dusty paved roads, broken in some places by old trees with huge roots that will stay there because it wouldn't occurred to anyone to cut them down, and sometime they will get around to re-paving. I miss the people, my people, the ones I shared Christmas, graduations and birthdays with. I miss the differences between us, the common ground that unite us, I miss the eyes so much like mine, the features I inherited from them, I miss the people that share my blood and also those who belong to me, and whom I belong to by choice.

Sometimes I think I detect a whiff of scent from home in the air, it always drifts away before I catch it... and it breaks my heart.