The question I’ve been asked most in the past few months is “when are you going home”. From March to July those words followed me around like a ghost, a thought at the back of my head that never left me, even when I tried to make it go away.
When I actually decided to go home in late July I wasn’t prepared for how it would feel. Watching the sun set as the plane made its descent into LF Wade International Airport and hit the runway made emotional in a way I’d never experienced before. Maybe it was because it’s the longest period of time I’d spent away from the island or maybe for the first time I realized how special of a place Bermuda is and how much it really means to me.
Bermuda is an island characterized by duality. It’s 24 square miles feel comfortable and safe but also can feel suffocating. The familiarity is a warm and comforting but it also can feel stagnant, unchanging and can alternate between feeling like someone pulling you into a hug or forcing you into a straitjacket.
This duality is something I didn’t confront until I went to university. I didn’t feel the strong appreciation for the beauty, the safety and instinctive sense of home that characterizes where I live. I didn’t appreciate the gentle sounds of tree frogs, the sunsets that look like paintings, the people who make you feel like family even if they’re strangers. Even the simplest things like walking along the railway trail, hearing the rush of the ocean and crunch of grass under my shoes were things I took for granted.
I only focused on how small Bermuda is, how things never feel like they're changing, how the opportunities I wanted didn't exist there. I wanted to get away to somewhere bigger, with more people and more “interesting” things going on. I craved the anonymity of a big city that’s impossible to achieve in such a small place.
But I didn’t realize how much I’d come to miss the other things about home as the years passed by. How something as simple as the crash of waves on the ocean is something I intrinsically associate with safety and joy.
Fundamentally for me I feel most at home where I feel safe, and Bermuda with its complex, dualistic nature is the one physical place where I’ll always feel safest.
And because of that a part of my heart always lives there. A part of me is irrevocably tied to that beautiful, messy little island. That parts a reminder that no matter how long I’m away, I’ll always be back and it’ll always welcome me as I am.
Comments