CAKE | 23 — How did I get here?

Why is it that a photo of a random residential street in some far away country I have never even walked down feels like home? Of all the places I have been to it’s a country I've never visited or experienced, so foreign in its customs and culture, that I seem to be missing. Looking at the picture causes a physical reaction, it makes my heart expand. There’s an eerie familiarity I cannot even begin to put into words, a distant longing. As if I once had lived on that exact street when I very well know that I haven’t and never will. 

And then, how could I had lived in a city for twelve years and never considered it home? Continuously feeling as if I had yet to fully arrive? Stuck in a state of perpetual mental transition. And now that I have moved away, not even missing it a bit. Not one corner I wish I could see again. Not one building, not even the house I used to live in, that elicits a sense of comfort. Not yet, maybe. It’s only the severed human connections that I long for. It’s the absence of the kind souls I’ve met there that hurts, not the actual spot on a map I have left behind. 

What does it take to leave? Why do we leave behind people we love? Is it a soft tug on our sleeve we barely even notice ourselves? Or is it similar to the sensation when the air suddenly shifts, when the winds picks up? Would that even be enough to consider disappearing? Or would the perception have to be more specific, more dramatic? Does it feel as if someone had secretly exchanged your locks? When none of your keys seems to fit any longer and you are forced to look for a different place to sleep one night? Is that the moment you finally come to understand that you are no longer needed? Or is it a slow accumulation of pain over time? When after a million harsh words spoken it takes only one that lodges in too deep and injects the truth? Is it then that you finally realize all of this will never be enough, even though you have more than you need? Is this when you calculate that whatever leaving will cost you, it will be worth it? Is that why you leave everything you got for that elusive thing called Maybe I–?

Some cannot fathom a life beyond the city limits. They cannot discern why anybody would want to change the view from her kitchen window. This is perfectly fine, they say. Why look for a new job, a new grocer, a new bookstore or a new cafe whose owner doesn’t even know how you like your coffee? Monotony can be so enticing. But sometimes it numbs all your taste buds. It is so easy to replace passion with habit, even if the view from your kitchen is a wall.

I used to despair that I never felt like I belonged anywhere I lived but everywhere I didn’t. I suppose that’s what happens when you have been uprooted at an early age. But you can only take a close look at what truly matters from a distance. And the plasticity of life is amazing. So take the risk, keep on stretching, arriving anywhere you feel you might belong, even if it won’t be for long. And “if you find yourself asking: How did I get here? Isador once said, that probably means you are living a life worth living.“ (Aleksandar Hemon, The Lazarus Project)