Terra incognita

Few days before going home to Moscow. With my mind already on the go, hence, incapable of working, I started to think - why does this threshold of going "home" become so increasingly tough for me? Is it general tiredness? Something that I didn’t accomplish here, that doesn’t let me fully embrace the meaning of it all, splitting me in two? Why does even fun stuff, like meeting family and friends or going book-shopping, seems like a tour de force?

I tried to look into everything, which I dim responsible for this uncomfortable tension. From an energy consuming planning to general feeling of "homelessness". Vaguely, yes, maybe. But today it hit me, even though I am still ashamed to admit it, something that barely touched my mind before - it is the city, that makes things so much harder for me. Sadly, with all the wonderful and interesting that Moscow has to offer - the city is a stranger to me. And not the kind you can ignore.

I have never felt completely sure and safe there, this much is true. But I knew my ways, navigating myself in the city's everyday life, in its crowd of people and houses. I had my passages of behavior and routes of emotional control developed for all those years I lived there. My ways were changing along with the city's ways. It grew, I grew, adjusted. It suited my peculiar need for even the slight illusion of control.

Then I left, to start from a blank page and draw my own map of a new city. Willingly, I embraced all changes that the new city brought, feeling that this time I can make it work. Leaving Moscow behind, like some life-long project, that I failed to accomplish. It took me no time to forget the ways of Moscow.

I know, that the city as such has little to do with the way I feel. I see younger people, whose life is dependent on the city and its activities, creative and lively, navigating Moscow as their own domain. Young women, always alert, but somehow like fish that know their sea. I have never been one of them and now I lost even that little that I knew.

Yet, I can't really look at the city through the eyes of a foreigner. It still hold those small warm spots that belong to me and will never turn blind. Places where I grew up, where someone dear lives or lived. They are like pins on the city's map, between which I navigate. The rest is a great unknown.