“i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)”
– ee cummings, from the poem “i carry your heart”
I am so in love with Spain. I’m starting to get that feeling that I’ve been missing since I left here 3 years ago–It’s when something clicks and suddenly all of the pieces have been put back together. I don’t know what it is about this place but something fits. Can you be in love with a place? I’ve heard of the summer romance that the mythical “they” talk about, and perhaps I’m having one with Sevilla. Sevilla makes the bad things less bad and the good things even better. Like a summer romance, all good things do come to an end, but I’m going to give this “relationship” all I’ve got until I board the plane for home. It’s always hard to live away from what’s comfortable, but the biggest regrets are the things you didn’t do. On that note, here is an open letter to the ones I love the most and like Sevilla, make the bad things less bad and the good things even better.
You can’t miss something that has never left. For a lot of my life, I have been doing a lot of the leaving. I’m always on the go, always moving; I’ve moved between four different cities in the past five years. The people you love, the home you love will never leave you. The people and these places are at the core of all that I do. I’ll be the first to tell you, “Distance does make the heart go fonder.” Whenever I leave I have this falling heart feeling that somehow I’m going to miss something or I’m going to become more of a happy memory or a “tagged” Facebook photo than a real person. I’m always the voice on the other end of the phone, but on the opposite end of the spectrum, if I never left, I would never know how much these people mean to me. You (in the most pluralized sense) are always with me. I don’t go anywhere without you in my back pocket. The past few years have been very difficult. There were more than a few dark moments and only those closest to me really understand the depth of this particular conviction. More than any miracle drug, it was you that got me through the hardest parts.
Thank you for picking up the pieces. Thank you for putting me back together. Thank you for believing that I would get back to this place where things are beautiful again and my perspective is no longer doom and gloom. Thank you for promising that I would be myself again. Every time I was slipping, you reached down and pulled me back up. For this reason, I love you with everything I have. My wish for you is that you never get your heart broken or your feelings hurt and I wish that your days are stress free and blissful as opposed to anxious and long. I know this isn’t what real life is like, but I promise I’ll be there as much I can, even if I can only be the voice on the other end of the phone. Isn’t that the beauty of modernity though? There really are planes, trains and automobiles. If you need me, I will be there. There are those people that will say what they want and form their own opinions, but we’ll chalk it up to the green-eyed monster. Jealousy does powerful things to a person and I’m only sorry they don’t have what I have. They don’t have you – they will go the rest of their life feeling claustrophobic, because they will never go beyond the four walls they’ve been so closed up in.
They don’t have my support system; they don’t have late night laughs, the tears, the warm welcomes and the sad goodbyes. They don’t have a mama that picks up the phone at 4am when you call because everything hurts so badly and you can’t sleep. The very same woman who hugs you just at much at age 23 as she did at age 2. They don’t have my father who broke the mold when he was made; who works so hard, has made so many sacrifices in his own life and at the end of the day, his biggest priority is and always will be who he loves most. They don’t have two sisters and a brother: one, the most brilliant woman I’ve ever met, who has held me in my darkest moments and told me it was going to be okay; the other, who tells me that I’m beautiful and makes me want to be a better person, and of course, my little man; who will still say I love you back in front of all of his friends and let me hug him even if he’s trying to ‘look cool’ as most 9 year olds do.
And finally, they don’t have my friends. The very same ones that pass the time laughing at me –slash- with me and will always make the best of what’s around. If all things go the way we plan, we’ll be 80 years old, drinking Mojitos on some huge front porch (we’re going to need a really big front porch) and hitting on younger men. I love you more than words and am already scared about what we’ll get ourselves into upon our reunion when I return.
You can’t miss something that has never left. For a lot of my life, I have been doing a lot of the leaving. I’m always on the go, always moving; the people you love, the home you love, will never leave you and I will never leave them. Home is the core of all that I do. Thank you for being mine.
Lindsey.
“Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle
Everything I do is stitched with its color.”
– W.S. Merwin, “Separation”
