Day 27: Coming Home

I remember when Miami started feeling like home.

It was after winter break my first year here, when I left New York and arrived back in the heat and humidity, going straight to the pool to thaw.

I hadn’t wanted to move to Miami, not really. I had done it for us, because we had wanted to leave New York and we had wanted to give A a chance at a career that he could be happy with.

“You’re moving to Florida?” I remember my friends saying to me in disbelief. I had felt the same way: I’m moving to Florida? Me, a liberal New Yorker who walks everywhere and loves public transit and is anti-gun and pro-choice? Florida?

“Well, not Florida, exactly,” I’d say. “Miami.”

It was like what I’d say when I’d introduce myself to people while I lived in Spain: Oh, I’m not American. I’m a New Yorker. From Manhattan.

Miami didn’t feel like home, though, not right away. It’s a transient city, with many of its residents working in nightlife and entertainment, most of its residents speaking Spanish, and the majority of its drivers believing that red lights are just a suggestion. I felt I stuck out like a sore thumb. Sometimes I still think I do.

And yet, it’s home. Home for now, at least.

I know Miami’s not where I’ll be in the long term. I hope that Miami’s not where I’ll be after next school year. Life often has other plans, though.

When we decided almost 10 months ago to call it, I didn’t expect to stay. But Miami was home. I couldn’t see myself going back to New York, and I didn’t know where else I’d go so suddenly. And then the way my community here just scooped me up and cradled me as I picked up the pieces of myself and found my way into my new life, my new apartment, was something I don’t know if I would have found anywhere else. For a transient city, some real gems have found their way here and into my life and my heart.

That will be the hardest thing when I finally do leave to go build a home somewhere else: saying goodbye to the friends I’ve made here.

Driving home from St. Augustine today, I felt the all-too-familiar, bittersweet feeling associated with trips ending: sadness that it’s over, but gladness and relief to be home.

I watched the landscape change from tree-lined highway to construction and heavy traffic, the Miami skyline appearing on the horizon, and I thought, This? This is home?

But it is.

Pulling up to my building, then dropping my bags after walking through my door, the light shining through and the warm scent of my apartment filling my lungs, I knew I was home.