It’s kind of hard to know what to write anymore. I feel like I’m stuck in a dream. Like I’m going on an endless trip, as if I was driving on a highway and not being able to stop. Like I’m looking at the window and I all I see is that I keep moving forward, faster and faster. So many things have happened, I feel I could never tell everything I’ve felt, thought and experienced. My head spins and thoughts keep going back and forth. So many things I just wish I could write them all.
It all goes back literally from the very beginning of this journey. At the start of this adventure from the moment I was on my own. It seems now like it happened so long ago, although it’s been only 6 months. I was in Charlotte Douglas International Airport in North Carolina. I had just gotten off the airplane coming from Dallas, where my parents had dropped me off and said good-bye for at least a good year. I still had to wait a few hours until my next plane so a nice cup of coffee sounded great to relax and wait. To prepare myself for what was ahead of me. To give myself into thought. So there I was at one of the many Starbucks in the airport, enjoying that one cup of coffee so much. It had a delicious strong flavor and it was really hot: like I like it. So hot I even burnt my tongue with it, but at that moment I couldn't care less.
I remember thinking about how I couldn’t cry when I said good-bye. I replayed the moment when I was hugging my parents for the last time at the airport, over and over in my head. It had been only a couple hours ago. I had been so close to crying, but I stopped myself. Why? I didn’t know at the moment, but I just couldn’t cry. Maybe I was afraid of crying, or of being sensitive or weak. The truth is, for me it wasn’t something sad the fact that I wasn’t going to see my family in a while. For me it was something new, something great, something exciting. The way I saw it, it was an experience that would teach me invaluable lessons, and being far from my family was part of this experience. It would make me stronger and value my family much more. Oh boy, did I ever know what I was really getting into. This was for real, there was no turning back, it wasn’t just a kid’s game anymore. I was feeling so brave at that moment, so fearless. So ready for everything and anything. So full of energy, hope and dreams. Yet I had no idea of how it was going to be, how I was going to become a better person, or find all the answers I was looking for, or even fulfill some of my dreams.
I can almost imagine me now, with that little sparkle in the corner of my eyes, head up high, with a fire in my heart and a desire to taste a new piece of life.
It seemed like time was going so slowly, because I sat sipping that cup of coffee for a long time. There I was for the first time, truly alone… Coffee and heart in hand. And although I was feeling really excited, I felt such a peace inside me. But I didn’t really know what was coming… I never imagined, that about 5 months from then, I would be sitting in a Dunkin' Donuts, on the other side of the world (this time having a cup of tea), but having the same feeling I had felt that one afternoon at the airport. The difference though, was that this time the loneliness I felt was absolutely real. It wasn’t a dream, and it wasn’t fun nor exciting.
It was quietly painful.
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