Day 20 - Coming Home

After a hastened farewell to Quim, I run, buy another 6€ bus ticket, hop on one just as it arrives, and spend 20 nervous minutes in a traffic jam. Still, I get to the airport on time, where I check in and very superficially read my boarding card.

On it, big bold capitals urgently announce that "BOARDING GATE CLOSES AT", but I just grasp the time. I understand that it "opens at" 13:55.

At the aforementioned time, I start gravitating towards the boarding gates, pass the security control, and then discover I have a winding 15 minute walk ahead of me to get to gate A63 (so it says on the signs). That's also when I read the ticket correctly. Consequently, I leave my silhouette in the air and start running like mad.

Luckily, the flight was quite delayed, and when I finally arrived at the gate, the boarding had just started.

It is no surprise that I didn't read what was written on the boarding card. My mind was constantly focused on quite different matters. Well, actually, it was quite unfocused, because of quite different matters. The main one being that I was Coming Home.

And I didn't want to. Or not that much. And yet, I was tired of running like mad from place to place, and thinking of my own comfy bed, a bit of sunshine, nothing to do all day but smile, and seeing my parents again, made it quite an attractive perspective.

But then again, I yearned to see more. To do more, feel more, experience more, burn more kilometres. Coming Home felt like giving up when I was winning. I felt I still had so much to do, so many places to go, so many people to meet, so much to live.

In this frame of mind I arrived in scorching Madrid after an uneventful but long flight. Thirty-seven degrees Celsius greeted me on my arrival, all the throng of them. Some more hot uneventfulness later, I was Home.

Physically.

I was still somewhere else. When I closed my eyes, landscapes of green still rolled past me, the laughs of recent friends still echoed in my ears, my hair still danced in the wild wind.