My mind has been wandering to and from such different places that I don’t know where it is any more. But one thing I’m sure of: mind and feelings have not wandered together. Though to be fair, their paths do cross. And that’s what moves me, I suppose.
For a long stretch of this year I thought I had pretty well persuaded myself to go back to what once was known and comfortable, though not the sanest or the happiest option for me: namely, to go back to Mexico. I could think of thousands of very plausible and convincing arguments for this decision and I almost managed to delude myself, to persuade the somewhat gullible person I still am that it would be by far the best option. I let myself be defeated by what other people thought, by thinking that I would be better off somewhere, that being an “exile” is a bad thing.
I’m not going to discuss the first two statements, it’s not for me to talk about them now. But the exile I want to come to terms with. The exile I need to talk to and face and also embrace as what I have decided for myself as the price to pay for my freedom and creativity to flourish.
It seems to me now that each and every word I wrote for my dissertation has become a real “flesh and bone” experience. What was meant to be descriptive turned out to be prescriptive. And it seems to me I have lived it all, word by word, the good parts and the bad.
Being an exile does not necessarily involve wartime. It does not always involve being removed from some place involuntarily. On the contrary, exile can be voluntary, one can impose it upon oneself. A person can be an exile and never have left home, the familiar sight out of the window, the walks through the city or the embrace of the loved ones. A person can be an exile in her own room, looking at the trees that sway rhythmically, endlessly, day in day out. A person can be an exile when she smiles and the smile is meant for someone, somewhere else.
And yes, I have been exiled for almost two years, in the United Kingdom. But let us not forget I came here of my own accord. I came here out of a love for a culture, a language and a literature that have given me life in so many ways I cannot recount or explain. I came here for a dream of beauty and of liberty, to give myself freedom and to empower myself and gain strength and peace.
All of the above I achieved. England has given me that and more. It’s given me what I find most valuable in the whole world: knowledge and learning. But it has also given me terrible loneliness. And silence. In silence I have heard my voice. But in loneliness I have heard my cry. The realisation has come to me that learning was not the end of the road.
But there is yet another realisation that I must learn to accept and live comfortably with: I will always be an exile, no matter where I go. If I leave England, I’ll leave half my life behind. I will leave the beauty, and nature, and my peace and my silence. I will have to abandon the life I have just began to build that has cost me so much work and tears. I know I belong here, and at the same time I know I don’t. And if I do go what I will remember with a blazing intensity will not be the cold winters or the early dusk, but these beautiful days full of sun, warmth and shine. An ironic goodbye gift from the Tropical England.
