I have never felt such aching nostalgia for a place as I do for Barcelona. If I remember correctly, I was fairly miserable this time last year. I hated Onix, I hated being treated like an outsider, but without warning, maybe at the trigger of a certain song or smell, I have been inundated by memories of Barcelona of which I no longer seem to have ownership. It's so difficult to remember exactly what it felt like to walk around Parc de la Ciutadella with my iPod, to wander through Ciutat Vella with Kevin and stop in at Caelum or Arc Café, to come home to dirty dishes and Stephanie, the love of my life. These things, and many others, are what I took for granted then and would do anything to reclaim now. I can't believe that that was me living on the Plaça del Diamant, spending nights in Velcro, watching Barça games in crowded bars, walking up to Montjuïc to El Polvorí. There's just too much to long for. It seems so unfair that what was once reality has turned into fiction, a dream, and that there is no return, for as each second passes, the future again arrives prematurely. I have only a weak grasp of what my life was a year ago, not because I don't remember, but because nothing about my present physical reality has anything to do with the life that I had in Barcelona.
I sometimes wonder if I would be happy if I went back. Would all of this anxiety, this late-night morriña, simply dissipate, or would my problems follow me, transplanted from one city to another? I guess that it's impossible to tell. Certain things that I loved last year -- people, circumstances -- wouldn't be there, and yet many would. I can't help reminding myself of how badly I wanted to go home during those first few months, though. Maybe I've changed since then. Maybe things that were so important then aren't things that I take too seriously anymore, and maybe things that I never valued before are the things that are keeping me up at night now.
