Bittersweet

I’m leaving for Spain tomorrow. I’m excited and nervous at the same time. One minute I am really excited about the future ahead, the next I am nervous for the very same reason. Tonight I said good-bye to my family. They’ll all be at work when I leave tomorrow. It was a tough good-bye even though I haven’t lived near them in almost 10 years. I wasn’t even living within driving distance really. But I don’t think that this time the depth of emotion was really all about the distance. It was about the sense of finality, of permanency.

Whenever I’ve left “home” previously, I always thought that it would be for a finite period of time. That somehow made the move easier. I’ve always believed that no action is still action and that the lack of a decision is still a decision in itself. But I guess it’s simply easier to stay put – even in a foreign environment– than it is to move on. When I first moved to Madrid almost 6 years ago I thought I would be staying just for the summer. I ended up staying for 2 years. Nacho first came to the US on a student visa for 9 months. He stayed almost 2 1/2 years! But we never expected it to be that way. So we said our good-byes to friends and family, thinking that it wouldn’t be that long until we saw them again. Not even just until we saw them again but until we were back in the bosom of the people and land that knew us best. On we went on our merry way – eager for the excitement of something new, confident that home would be there when we were ready to return.

Nacho and I are in agreement that these first couple years in Madrid will be a trial for us. A trial to see if the happiness we seek is found in Spain or if we need to keep searching. When people ask me if I am moving for good, I say, “I hope so because that means we’ve found happiness.” Despite that truth, the move does make me a touch sad. Not because I don’t want to go. But because I don’t know when I’ll be back. Sure, I’ll be back for vacations, weddings, Christmas. But I don’t know if I’ll be back to live. Leaving home is never easy. It’s particularly hard when it’s permanent…

P.S. The pic is me and Nacho on the day we closed on the sale of our condo. Another day that was bittersweet.