It Starts With The Perfect Goodbye

The art of a good goodbye while constantly moving.

Havana, Cuba

Before I was a nomad, I would romanticise living in the country I was going to visit long before I had even boarded the plane, booked the flight, or requested the annual leave (a secondary thought in my past life as a corporate girl). Before Cuba, I would imagine walking under the balconies of drying clothes in the streets of Centro Havana, rumba or reggaeton blaring always from some shop or open window, shouting to or over the Cuban by my side, a musician maybe, or lover of rhythm at least.

Or again, before visiting Lisbon for the first time, I would imagine myself each day in some strappy, flowy red dress, skin aglow courtesy of Lisbon’s nostalgic golden hour light. I’d be in sunglasses the way you’re always allowed to be in mainland Europe, rushing to be uncharacteristically social somewhere up high in the hilly city. Somedays I would think of my outfit for market runs in small towns in Colombia, others I’d imagine train rides along the southern coast of Spain with people I hadn’t met yet but would love and who would love me too. 

I was scripting, which is a little bit beyond daydreaming, though I cherish the sanctity of a daydreamer’s eye. In these moments, I was inviting myself to make vivid the things that felt very important and very far away. The importance of living where the language I speak is never the one I was raised on, but the one I learn to translate my personality into, without an inch of supervision. Or where I can be slow and publicly in love with the way the sunlight warms the pavement beneath me or fractures the glistening ocean at 12 pm on a Tuesday. 

Obviously, any script of mine did not cater to the UK. I was not really saying goodbye there, since I always had something to return to. At the time it was harder to script what seemed always already written. So I moved to Oaxaca, on the Pacific coast in Mexico. It took a while to feel entitled to coaxing out all the alter-egos that I had spent so long scripting. It took even longer to humbly accept that none of them wanted to live the way I initially dreamed them up. The first months of premature nomadism turned out to be more fixated on learning the make or break of a good goodbye.

l left Oaxaca after 5 weeks and in doing so, said goodbye to the endless art gallery dates, tlayudas, fear of speaking bad Spanish, an unconvinced mezcal phase, stares, and a well-fed camera roll. Then came the 8-hour drive to the coast, where I spent the whole time calculating how long was left until the next imagined adventure.

To some, I call Oaxaca City my first love, or the first boyfriend I brought home whose name no one remembers now. The one that I dated because I was asked sweetly enough, where the breakup was a quiet relief, handled with exchanged kindness and hardly any tears. The vibe was off; it was better to leave for somewhere I would yearn for after saying goodbye.

I left Oaxaca and took myself to a mountain town in Chiapas where I would learn to say goodbye properly, on a 4 am bus down the mountains, observing the wakeful quietness of what was home, what was community, what was too high for me but grounding. I left luggage behind with the landlady, rented studios, bought plants and heavy clothes, told everyone to save the Mexican number, all to ensure my return.

I say that being a nomad is less about always jumping from place to place, but more about feeling deep connections to many places; recognising the attachments to big and silly things, like the homes you were invited into, the people, and the places you met them in, kissed them in and shared a meal with them in. The cedar smell of the studio you rented and the turmeric stains you left on the counter. You say goodbye to all of this and then you decide if you will come back to it, and of course you do. 

Romanticising can be dangerous when left unchecked, I don’t deny this. The rose-tinted glasses have to come off but the need to cast a loving gaze over everything, to be gently delusional, is very important. I think a lot about this, how I have cast a loving look on a place to extend grace, to feel less of an impostor or to walk the streets solo in countries where women like me don’t readily fit in doing so. In casting myself as the love interest in the cities that I wander through, the silly little daydreams that lead to flights that lead to friendships and loves and lifestyles become visions for how I choose to create my life.

Lisboa, Portugal.

Now I am in the habit of going where the land, the people, and the moment want me; I go everywhere that I am loved. I mean I go everywhere. I let cities convince me to stay a little longer, to make friends because it is safe to, because goodbyes aren’t forever, to know the bus or the ferry schedule by memory but only book it once I’m sure, once I’ve seen myself fully here. To see and send me off only once the daydream has been fulfilled.