Week 26: Not Ready

In one more week, I will be boarding an airplane to go to the place I've called "home" for the last 11 years of my life.

My home is filled with the people I love the most, the places that are comfortable to me and a context where I always know who to be. My home is filled with happiness and pain, laughter and anger, excitement and regret - like just any other home.

My home is where I feel the safest and feel the most scared. Safe because I have so many things to protect me and scared because of all the things that hold me back.

In many ways, it feels like a dream; my mind can trace the shapes, characteristics and outlines of people and things but none of it feels tangible. Its existence does not transcend itself into my reality.

Everything will feel different because I am different. I see my home with new eyes and I'm not sure if I want to run to it or run away from it. Regardless, it is the inevitable, a truth that was destined for me from the beginning.

I was not naive enough to think this was going to last forever but was escapist enough to think that time would wait for me.

In Saint Lucia, I have found a new home. It is a little smaller than what I am used to, does not come with my car, my kitty or my beautiful family and friends. The food does not make me feel nostalgic for my mother's cooking and the cat calling makes me thankful for reserved Canadian men.

But despite its small size, it's given me room to grow into a better person, opened my heart to people I did not think my heart could open to and gave me more people to love.

It taught me lessons I did not think I was ready to learn and gave me the courage and strength to move forward from myself. I showed me that I could be as open as I could be protective.

I will not tell you that my experience has been perfect because it hasn't. It has been filled with fear, disappointment, hurt just as it has been filled with thankfulness, happiness and fulfillment.

In one more week, Saint Lucia is going feel like a fleeting memory, as though it was just a dream. A dream where my mind can trace the shapes, characteristics and outlines of people and things but none of it will feel tangible. Everything will feel far away.

In the end, I do not know if I am ready to leave. I have found too many things to love.

For this, I am incredibly happy and so incredibly sad.

Until next time,

-Ko.