NOTE: This piece was written for a class.
In 6 months, I will leave here. This is not hyperbole. I will get on a plane, a direct one, which they didn’t have three years ago, and I will wake up in a different country. I don’t know if I will come back. There are a lot of reasons why I’m not sure if I’ll return, the chief among them being the political climate. I don’t want problems to arise with Trump’s immigration policy, and since I am a dual citizen, there is no legal document keeping me here.
Knowing that I am about to leave the first 18 years of my life behind, I have tried to burn the most important parts of it into my memory. It’s all I can do, I think.
I will spend hours rereading and cataloguing my favorite books from my childhood. Most were written by Graeme Base or Colin Thompson, because the things that captivated me most were intricate details and hidden meanings. I try not to think too much as I read them, knowing that if I do I will start to cry. My books remind me of a time when I trusted my parents to be good, when they would tuck me into bed with a kiss on the cheek and the reassurance that they loved me unconditionally. Then, they would have done anything for me. That’s not the way it is now. The more I expressed myself and formed my own identity, the less my parents seemed to love me.
I will take long walks through a neighborhood I no longer live in, thinking of the nights when I was 10 years old and everything was too much for me. I would ride my bike to the park, the wind pushing my tears diagonally down my face, gripping the handlebars with white knuckles. Once I arrived, I’d sit on top of the playground roof and watch the sunset. I could spend hours up there.
I will hold the people I love, knowing that there is about to be an ocean between us. I will try to remember how it feels to kiss my boyfriend, or to take his hand in mine, or to creep up behind him as he sits and wrap my arms around him. I will try to remember the way he falls asleep watching movies on my couch, and the way I gently wake him up to take him home. I will try to remember the look of disgust that I take on when I ask for a bite of his chocolate (he prefers white), or on his when he tries mine (I like it as dark as possible).
There is so much more that I could name, but I only have half an hour. I feel this way about the six months I have left here as well. There is so much I would like to do, and so much I would like to make sure I can remember. Eventually, I will run out of time, but I will have to try my best.