Bittersweet Byes to Beautiful BC
In T-48 hours I’ll have flown across North America and relocated into my new home, NYC, for the next year(s)! Nervous, excited? Still in a state of disbelief since I found out about Columbia almost half a year ago? Yes, yes, and yes. I feel tired at the moment (must be from all the errands and the packing) and apprehensive as I start this new chapter because so much is going on in this world right now but also how much has changed not just around me but within me. Spending the past year and a half with my family members wasn’t easy. There were the good and the bad moments but falling back into older family dynamics brought up a nostalgia of my former high school days. Days where I couldn’t wait to go out and conquer the world. How that has drastically changed as I’ve gotten older… haha. Despite being still quite optimistic and hosting various hopes for my and our future, I also find it harder to say goodbye or at the least, a ‘see you later.’ There’s a part of me that recognizes I can always move back home and visit but it won’t be the same. It’s like an era of my life is coming to an end. The era of being someone who can ride in the backseat of the car with my little sister (who isn’t so little and almost taller than me) next to me and with my two parents in the front. Driving to the grocery store and I, obnoxiously but very happily blasting Taylor Swift from my phone. The era of deferring to my parents at the restaurant or having a state of peace that on a vacation, they’ll have everything figured out. Perhaps, it’s the era of being a kid. And yes, while I may have been an adult -albeit a young one- for a while, it’s still that sentimental part of me that isn’t yet ready to start fleshing out my own journey and start building the pieces of my own family someday. Isn’t that scary?
This piece really is about all the various emotions I’m hosting within me. I don’t know how to feel. I’ve been told that I should be happy and I am. What a privilege and honour to be able to get to do graduate studies in a city I’ve dreamed about living in since four years ago? I am excited. I’m sure that through the pain and the challenges to come that I will come on top of it and grow. I’ll find it all worthwhile. It’s just the time, the minutes trickling in before you take the big leap that you get all sweaty and nervous. Can I? Will I? And then of course, just as quickly the air sweeps past your face and your heart flutters right as you cross the other side. Phew, I made it.
I’ve said a few times already so I’ll be brief about it but when I first moved back home in 2017, I didn’t necessarily want to be in Vancouver. Crazy? Especially, now as I find it so hard to say goodbye for the next little while. I know it’s not going to be forever and I can make trips, but why don’t you let me entertain my dramaticism (I don’t think that’s a word but just stick with me) for a bit. The contours of the North Shore mountains, the clear blue skies, the running at Kits beach near the peaceful waters that I find so familiar like the back of my hand will soon be replaced by a concrete jungle of large looming shadows from skyscrapers. Vibrancy pumping in a different way.
It was in the stillness, in the quiet of Vancouver that I found myself again and more importantly, found out who I could be. Not necessarily, who I should be, which I thought was the goal all these years, but who I could be. The most liberating and empowering growth I don’t know I could have picked up so quickly elsewhere. Vancouver taught me many things but I’ll share three:
There is beauty in complacency and not just in the striving.
There is happiness in the routine, the mundane, and the ugly.
There are songs from Mother Nature for those who strain their ears to listen and there are secrets only the thundering Pacific ocean waves can reveal.
Vancouver, oh how good you’ve been to me. I will miss you dearly and all the people I’ve gotten to cross paths with here. I’ll hold onto these memories and keep them tucked closely to my heart. Until the day we meet again, I’ll continue fervent proclamations that I am indeed a Vancouverite and send virtual hugs to the people I love–
