I’ve always been a bit of a nomad person. During the 4 years I spent in Barcelona, I moved like 9 times or so: Putxet, Raval, Gràcia. In May it’s going to be 3 years since I moved to San Francisco (without actually knowing I was doing so), and during these 3 years I’ve lived in SOMA, Haight & Ashbury, Noe Valley, and Parkmerced, in a total of 10 different apartments. If this weren’t enough, I happened to marry a nomad person too, his moving stats certainly beat mine!
About two years ago, I became a bit obsessed with the idea of finding a place that I could finally call home. I came back ‘home’ (where my parents live and have always lived) and people would ask me: where do you live now? They meant «in which country», not «what’s your address», and I didn’t even had an answer to that. I tried not to think too much about it, but the truth is I felt kind of lost, as if I didn’t belong anywhere.
Today I’m leaving Barcelona after a month and a half of traveling between San Francisco, Barcelona and Amsterdam. Today I’m going home. Yesterday I spent two hours walking on the beach, and I felt this town, Calella, as my home. My home as in hometown, as in the place where I can always come back and feel safe. I don’t especially like or dislike this town apart from its beach (which I love!). But it doesn’t feel like home-home anymore. I feel comfortable acknowledging, maybe for the first time in my life, where I belong, why I like Calella and why San Francisco is my new home now.
Whenever I go back to Calella, I feel like I am a kid again. Or a teenager. Or both at the same time 🙂 I feel time is frozen and I remember when my first computer- a 386- was here, in this exact same desktop where my laptop is right now. I look around and see my swimming trophies, high school diplomas, even a letter from a friend which was written 15 or 16 years ago. Something in this room is weird, there’s no swimming bag, no high school books, no CDs, no bike, no friends … And there’s always this suitcase.
After all these years searching for a place to call home, it’s somehow difficult to accept that I have a new home, but I do. I know I’m not going to last more than a year in our current apartment, but San Francisco is probably going to be home for a bit more. Or maybe not. But honestly, I don’t think about it that often (thanks Leti!). Because you know, the same way when you try to run away you can’t run away from who you are, and you always take ‘that bag’ with you, when you don’t (run away) but move around like I do, this same bag, full of good and bad things, full of you and your loved ones, always travels and settles with you.