Away from the Ghost of Burden

Already in my short time here, I have come to anticipate and accept the contradictions that are weaved throughout my understanding of Havana, of Cubans, and my personal goals while studying here. So not surprisingly, when I thought about missing home, I realized that I didn’t. Perhaps for the first time in my life (including my life in Ann Arbor and all the places I’ve lived), I don’t feel homesick, don’t feel consumed with longing for someplace or someone to provide comfort and stability that was frequently absent in the reality of my life. I have searched for that magical missing piece since I was born and began to believe that the quest was an inevitable aspect of my life, the destiny of a dissatisfied wanderer.
Whether it was thinking about future loves, daydreaming about characters from the stories I read, or filling my schedule to the brim with meetings and classes, I consistently searched, consciously and habitually, for the external clue that would fill an internal void created by fighting parents, two houses and the weight of guilt at having caused so much unhappiness. Ironically, travel has frequently held the possibility of this magic and I spent my time on airplanes, mountains and beaches waiting for the feeling that I could never name to occur, waited for the sound of the ‘click’ in my ear that would let me know I could stop looking, that I’d arrived where I’ve wanted to be.
And yet, this trip is different. Perhaps I’m in denial, but I am not aware of missing anything acutely. And I don’t feel overwhelming pressure as on other trips. Being away from home has granted me a freedom to experiment and play that is usually so difficult for me to embrace. Since coming to college, I have actively tried to create a sense of home internally, to provide myself the stability that was always lacking. I have shed the skin of my childhood, of my father’s expectations, my mother’s sadness, of constant comings and goings and the darkness around the corner. I did this before, and not because, of being in Cuba. But being here, or rather being away from the ghost of burden that so recently consumed me, provides a safe space to move around these newly realized boundaries. There is freedom in my inability to understand our house mother Maria when she explains the plot of a television show, in the need to adapt to power outages and broken toilets, a weightlessness when my name is perpetually mispronounced, another chain link cut with the removal of the second ‘n’. A safety that is so contradictory; a space safe in the unknown, in the demands, in the misunderstandings, in the solitude.
Navigating through La Habana Vieja, walking along the Malecon surrounded by lustful teenagers with salt air stinging my eyes and constantly translating helps to squash the self-doubt that can only be eliminated through experience, through physicality, throughout movement. In addition to all of the beauty and kindness and questioning of being here, for me this time helps to solidify this newly constructed foundation and I am trying to play and run along its planks. Like the buildings that line the streets of La Habana Vieja, I am partaking on a restoration project of sorts; tending to walls and facades that were once neglected and using what I inherently posses to make the renewal complete.