The end is too near
I haven’t been this heartbroken in a long while. I sat in the plaza near the puerta real today for an hour and a half and just thought – thought about all that I’m leaving behind here. I like going places at first, but every time I am reminded how hard it is. You make new friends and then you let them go. You love a place, and then one day you leave it.
I can’t even write this without crying. My host mom told she is sad now, that our time is very short. Every thing reminds me – the orange trees and smell of their flowers on the evening walks home, the ever-lasting Spanish sunshine, the last classes, the few remaining days. All of them say the same thing: the time has come to move on.
This first round of goodbyes will be tough – the people I have come to love will cease to be a part of my life, maybe forever, or at least in the way that they have been these last few months. My friends here, my family. But June brings the hardest goodbye of all. I leave the Alhambra and the olive trees and the wine. Siestas and fiestas and paella and art and history and… I leave a way of being and speaking and loving and living that I don’t think I realized I loved so much until I sat down in that plaza today.
As difficult as it is, I’m trying not to dwell on it too much and just enjoy. One week from today we say goodbye. Every evening is an evening less I have to wander through the orange-scented streets and BE HERE. One week to live the fact that sí, eso es la vida.