If I'm being honest I will never love a city as much as I love Budapest, Hungary; between the people, the food, the buildings that city will always have 90 percent of my heart.
Leaving was the hardest thing that I have ever gone through and
broke my little 12 year old heart more than words can express.
The point of this post however is not to remember Budapest, it's to tell you something that has happened in that ten year gap I've been living in... I have realized that I feel at home again. Here. In Falmouth.
This is something I hate to admit (no offense) because spending the first twelve years of my life traveling the world with my family and seeing so many different cultures was unbelievable and amazing... To return from that unreal lifestyle and land in a small town where some people have asked if European was a language was my worst nightmare... But the thing is while I've been playing sports, lounging by the ocean, going to school, watching TV; something magical has happened for me... I have started to feel at home in this small little town. I'm not sure when it happened or what really did it, but here I am; living in one place for more than five years and I'm happy. I'm content. I feel at home. I keep saying this because it's truly a miracle that I feel this way.
My heart has ached most of my life for a place to call home, although I loved every moment of my crazy nomadic life, a part of me always wondered what it would be like to know someone for my entire life, or a town for that long (grass is always greener I know). But now I feel like I kind of know how that feels. Even though I still get lost in Mashpee Commons every time I go there (something that would have been solved if I spent my adolescent weekends there) and I haven't known anyone here (except my family) since kindergarten, but I still have known this town and these people longer than I've known anywhere or anyone else.
Most of this is because I have an amazing family just minutes away from me and I have found friends who truly care about me (both at college and at home). This family I'm talking about took me in when I was alone and miserable with no friends on this side of the Atlantic Ocean. This family is my family, but they are all more than that, they are my friends as well. I've written about the love that my family shares before but I truly can't express how great it feels to have them in my life. I can't imagine where I'd be if I didn't have them when I landed here as an awkward 12 year old. It is truly inexplainable and I will be eternally grateful for each of my cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents for loving me so much. At any rate, I know that these past ten years have been rough and I have had to forgive a lot of people (even though they haven't said sorry) for ripping me away from my city; but in that time (even the darkest days) I have come to find a home here. And that's all I've ever wanted.
It will be exactly ten years ago on Sunday that I boarded the plane from Budapest with tears in my eyes, drowning all the sounds out with my NOW CD, and landed here in Falmouth. I still can't believe how long it's been, I also can't believe how much I've grown and changed but I'm so grateful for the journey.... Maybe it's because I finally have a concrete plan to move back to Budapest that it is making me feel okay about saying I feel at home here or maybe it's just because I have never come close to living in one place this long but regardless of the reason, one day when I'm not living near the beach I will long to be back near it, maybe not as much as I long for Budapest, but I will definitely long for it and that is something truly special for me.
I am truly grateful for this whirlwind of an adventure that I call my life,
and I can't wait to see where I am in the next ten years.
I know at least one of those years will be spent back in the city that has my heart,
but in the meantime I'm starting to feel okay saying Falmouth is my home.
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