Winds of change
I AM FROM ALL THE SITES I HAVE FELT HOME
Carolina Zuluaga
I often find myself answering the question "Where are you from?" Most of the time the answer is automatic. I am from Colombia, of course, I was born there.
The point is that when I ask myself where I am from, I do not find a single answer, since since I was very little my journey has taken me to multiple places. Even when I lived in Colombia, my first 11 years of life, we were often moving with the family.
When you are little this process is something incomprehensible, you are saddened by not seeing more your schoolmates or your neighbors. And at the same time, I think that being small you also adapt more quickly, or at least, this happened to me.
Without a doubt the most important change was emigrating to Spain. I remember spending a whole week crying over everything I had left behind. What I didn't know then was that my most childish and naive part had also stayed there. In addition to being transitioning to adolescence on a physical and hormonal level, somehow I also grew internally.
I lived in Spain for more than 20 years, where we also moved from time to time to work for my mother or her partner. Finally, when I finished my university studies, my family returned to Colombia and I decided that I would stay in Barcelona, which I already considered my home.
It wasn't long before I decided to try my luck in Canada, where I lived for 3 months. It was another experience that marked my life. I realized how difficult it is to emigrate to another country as an adult, and going through the entire process of bureaucracy and documentation was difficult for me. This and the love story that I left to finish in Barcelona brought me back.
After 3 years, with a few experiences behind me, I made the decision to start a trip, bought a one-way ticket, packed my backpack and headed back to my origins to begin with. I went back to Colombia. It was a reconnection with my roots that was deep and very transformative on an internal level. I spent 8 months there between trips and family stays.
When it was time to go back to Spain, I decided that I didn't want to go back to Barcelona. That's when I started what was 3 years of living in one place each season. Menorca welcomed me as one more, it was a wonderful experience. Like Tenerife and Amsterdam. In the midst of this I also spent time in India, living in a community that felt like home for a short time.
I currently live in Amsterdam, after having returned to Barcelona and having felt that my time there is already over. I feel like I will be living here for a long time, as I feel like laying the groundwork. But with me you never know. I think it is already a way of life.
So because of all this, when I say that I am from Colombia, I feel that I am falling short, I feel that it is not fair to discard so quickly all those places that one day I also felt home, that saw me grow, transform me into what I am now.
From now on I would like to say, in a shorter way, that I am not only from one site and that I am from all the sites that have welcomed me and will welcome me.