On London and leaving

leave

[leev] 

verb

1.

to go out of or away from, as a place.

2.

to depart from permanently. 

A lot has already been said about leaving, I'm completely aware of the fact that I’m not the first, nor the last person who has ever left home. But maybe the amount of letters, articles, and poems written about leaving is directly proportional to the huge amount of courage it takes to actually do it…and so we write about it.

Ever since I was a little girl I pictured myself in distant places, when my mind wondered it took me far away from Mexican borders. So when I turned 19 I packed my bags and bought a ticket to London, feeling certain that everything I could ever learn about life was nowhere near my living room. 

Just as I expected, I found things in London that I could’ve never encountered if I had stayed:

I found courage. But even more, I found fear. I discovered that, by definition, in order to be courageous one must first be afraid. And so I decided to use fear as fuel instead of an impairment. 

I met and instantly became enemies with much of my demons. Childhood demons, adult life demons, insecurity demons, demons from the past, demons awaiting in the future. 
Little did I know that later on, these demons would become close friends. I even realized that these demons make up for great conversation... the only thing I had to do was let them speak.  

I also found liberty by living in a tiny room with a bunch of lost Mexicans who ended up in the same place for different reasons, but with one common mission: to enjoy. Away from our homes, away from our families, away from our beds, but each passing day coming closer to what we referred to as freedom. 

I’m certain none of us knew much about life, but we all knew a whole lot about living. 

I met solitude. It's funny how one of the biggest and most multicultural cities in the world gave me lessons about loneliness. But then again, loneliness eventually taught me that we’re never really alone because we always have ourselves. So in reality, what London taught me wasn’t loneliness, it simply showed me the paramount importance of enjoying my own company. 

Looking back, I now see that the biggest gift London gave me was myself. It proved to me that everything I need, I already possess…

I guess the beauty of leaving relies on its paradox: we go far away from the things we know, only to encounter that the biggest discovery of any of our voyages will always be ourselves. We leave home in order to find it within us.  

I still haven’t returned from that first time I left. I did briefly for a year but I had to leave again, leaving has turned into my source of transformation, of healing, of growing. 

I know I’ll come back home eventually, I know the way by heart, but I still feel like there are pieces of me scattered somewhere around the globe that I have yet to collect. However, I still find comfort in the fact that every wild thing, in time, returns home. 

Sincerely yours, 

Natalia.