I miss Switzerland.
I knew it was going to happen eventually. I knew there was no possible way that I move to a place so breathtaking and so magical and then drag myself away without feeling the consequences.
I missed it in June, and I missed it in October, and now, though it’s been almost a year since I left Logan airport, suitcase in hand, fearful tears on my cheeks, I miss it just the same.
Sometimes I think back to that moment in the terminal when I looked out through the icy windows at the nose of the Swiss Air plane. I think back to the shaking in my hands and the force with which I held them steady as I handed my boarding pass to the stewardess. I think about the lump in my throat I fought against when I rounded the corner and turned around to wave once more to my parents, only to realize they had already disappeared from view. I remember the prayers I almost unconsciously repeated, over and over, as I sat in my seat and waited for the plane to reach cruising altitude.
I was so afraid. I was so sure that I was making a mistake, that I might be entering into a new sort of torture, in an unfamiliar place with an unfamiliar language, unfamiliar people. I had no expectations other than that this was about to be the loneliest five months of my life. But I remembered Germany, my love for the European life, and quelled the shaking my hands and the tears behind my eyes.
Sometimes I wish I could go back to that moment, and take my hand and look into my eyes, and tell my previous self that it would all be okay. That those five months would be like heaven, not hell. That in that time, I would grow and love and laugh and adventure and yes, there would be times that I was lonely; yes, I would make mistakes; but I would treasure every single second of those five impending months.
Now it’s all I can do to keep from sinking into my memories of a bygone time. Every once in awhile I’ll succumb to the memory of the sweet scent of spring, and wrap myself up in the sound of tram wheels and laughter and rushing water and crackling speakers as I walk through marble hallways and cobblestone streets and lock-covered bridges and feel prickly grass and splashing puddles and soft cotton sheets and the scattering of gravel from landing on it a little too hard. And every so often, if I’m lucky enough, I’ll catch a glimpse of a friend - sometimes I catch her turning her head towards me to ask me a question, or the way his eyebrows shot up when my tongue stumbled around his language, or the way her hair bounced as she ran to catch the train, or the way he knocked on the door when he had something exciting to share. These are the treasures, the “trinkets,” of those months I wanted to gather up in my arms and hold to me until they became a part of me, something unforgettable and permanent. But even writing this was enough to rip the wounds raw again, to draw tears from my tired eyes. I want to say “I wish I could go back,” but even then it wouldn’t be the same. Instead, I wish I could relive it. Because despite the mistakes and the occasional homesickness and all the pain it’s causing now, I would do it again in a heartbeat.
