"Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. "
(Elizabeth Gilbert)
*
When the plane takes off, i always keep my eyes opened and try to catch every image, with more accuracy and attention. My heart beats so fast that i can feel it chocking me, sometimes screaming inside of me for redemption. I can see my whole life in those moments. I can feel the same goosebumps, the first kiss, the first love, the first heartbreak. Then i start to think about the moments and the people i cherish the most in life. I don't think about their faces, but about their energies, the warmth that calms the rush of my boiling blood sometimes. I think about the times i was wrong, the ones when i forgot to forget. Those times when i stood behind my own door, trapped in the walls of my thoughts, the fears and the blank moments; those empty spaces that i could've filled with something else, maybe someone else.
This time it's different. I sit in the chair thinking about these past ten months. I can feel the fear of my first flight, the pressure, the missing sickness, the need of finding myself again. My stomach gets small and i close my eyes. I can see all the beautiful people i met, the times when i was free body and soul, that freedom of being true to yourself. I can see the small room with the big window in the middle; the walls that caught us awake in the late nights talking and laughing.
I am already across the sky when i open my eyes. I have this strange urge of taking his pen and write; never stop writing while my thoughts are drowned by music. I think about these amazing people that came out to be my friends. I remember the trips, the jokes, the differences between us and the similarities. I think about the things i stole from each and everyone of them; their expressions, their smiles, their advices, their joy. I cannot describe this feeling though i want to. It's strange but it's just mine, and this helps me to be above clouds, on my seat near the window, leaving behind my second home, the place where i gave myself the chance to grow and follow my emotions.
Things happened so fast that i sometimes think it was a dream. I find myself crying, then smiling, then my whole body becomes a separate part of me that i observe and analyze, as if it was a box that keeps inside everything i treasure the most. I think about all of these things and all of these people and i wish i didn't just think. I'm trying to keep everything in mind, to grab any lost sensation, every smile and the words that used to feed me. Then i feel sad for trying so hard to do so. I realize the clock doesn't stop, that it's all in the past and i'm sitting on a chair miles away from Braga, hours away from the nights in the balcony, looking at the lonely streets.
I say to myself "everything happens for a reason" and then i smile. I remember a small talk about God, what's real and what's not, about faith and about chance. My mind just wonders to old places, teasing old feelings that pierce my body with every breath. I always think too much.
I'm coming back home. I can feel it in this plane full of strangers that i don't want to meet, see or hear, and they understand my rejection. I'm a rootless tree that cannot find place to fit or will to start again. My branches still surround Braga as my leaves get lost on the way, one by one.
"The missing" begins.
