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This may sound silly but I am already missing my home so much, and I’m still here! I first noticed it a couple of weeks ago when the “tunas” were singing outside my house on the night of the Inmaculada, when traditionally they sing all night to the Virgin in the square down the road, and I thought “this is probably the last time I’m going to hear this!”, and I got ridiculously SAD. It was almost like last spring when I was listening to the procession of the Virgen de Los Dolores that stops right below my bedroom balconies every Tuesday night during Semana Santa. I remembered how the year before I’d been on chemo and wondered if I’d ever hear it again, so this year I got up and taped it.
But I don’t know what to about all the same feelings I’m getting now … all these “this is the last time” moments. It’s really getting to me.
I guess it’s because it wasn’t my decision to move, to leave this place that has been my home for over 16 years. And it hurts, like having something I love being torn away from me. It just feels so bloody unfair, like…
You’re probably way ahead of me on this one, but it took me awhile to realise that having my home snatched away from me was not unlike getting cancer and suddenly being told I maybe have a 50/50 chance of living another five years. Because I’m not ready to go, I don’t feel done with living yet. And this is just how having my home taken away from me feels like. It’s not my choice, I don’t want to go, and it hurts.
And so I find myself looking at things in my apartment now just like how I started looking at things in my life when they first told me about the cancer. It’s making almost every goddam day-to-day moment too poignant to bear. Kind of like a double whammy. Stupid f*cking landlord just thinks I can go out and get any other apartment, even though I’ve told him this is MY HOME. And this is my street. I am so used to all the sounds and the changes in the light and how the different seasons feel… this place *is* me. I identify with it, and I love it, stupid warts and all. And I don’t want to go. I don’t want to live anywhere else.
Which reminds me of when I said here just over two years ago, “I really, really don’t want to die. Not like this, not so soon …”
It’s all mixed up together, you know?
So I might be moving to Pajaritos street. Pajaritos is Spanish for little birds. I kind of like the sound of that. The apartment isn’t ideal. It’s smaller for the same price and doesn’t have balconies or airconditioning. But it does have a lift and a nice rooftop terrace. And I’d be living next to my long time friend, student – and also my GP – Agustín.
