the art of leaving

notes on being a flight risk, written as I leave home

When I was 15, my mum sat me down at the kitchen table of my childhood home in Cyprus and asked what I thought about moving to the Middle East to be with my dad again, who had been working abroad for 2 years, giving me the choice as the eldest —that choice was likely too heavy a burden to put on a 15 year old child, but I understand my parents’ thinking and uncertainty as to whether I would be on board with the idea.

In retrospect, it surprises me how little thought it took for me to accept such a life-altering proposal at such a young age, but when I revaluate, I realise just how much sense it makes. I knew I wanted to experience much more than the small island life.

Boarding call

the first time I left

My mum was raised in the suitcase-packing, moving-box and container-filling lifestyle due to my granddad’s diplomatic relocations. I grew up listening to stories of his life in Egypt, Kenya and China, surrounded by the traveling memorabilia that fills my grandparents’ home. It planted a curiosity in me to see the world for myself. So when presented with the opportunity to do so, saying yes was a no-brainer —I even remember thinking “finally”.

There was no incentive for me to want to move on from that life other than the innate sense that I didn’t belong where I was —I was 15 and dramatic, does anyone even feel like they belong anywhere ever? I had a close group of friends, my first boyfriend —with a sweet childhood-friends-to-lovers story to tell at our wedding— I was doing well in school, attending piano lessons and had a large extended family that I was accustomed to seeing on a regular basis. My small island life was a coming-of-age musing until that day at the kitchen table when I said yes to moving to a different continent.

My first time leaving exposed me to the reality of everything you leave behind when you walk away. I remember announcing the move to my best friend and boyfriend and the tears that followed. My best friend left the room and I found her bawling on the bathroom floor of our maths tutoring centre, where we sat and hugged like our world was ending —again, 15 and dramatic. Meanwhile, my boyfriend was teasingly bargaining with my mum for a change of plans. I spent the next months leading up to the move making the most of my remaining time.

We moved in mid-August, cutting the summer short. I remember the exaggerated airport farewells with my friends who came to say goodbye and crying on the plane —which I have done on nearly every flight I’ve been on since.

I never expected you to actually finish anything. you were always leaving. I always picture you with a suitcase in your hand.

— Margarita Karapanou, Rien ne va Plus

My family, unexpectedly, moved back to Cyprus only 2 years later, where I finished school before I left for university in England on my own. But flash forward nearly a decade later since the first time, I’m on the phone to my mum having a repeat of our kitchen-table conversation, as she informs me of a job opportunity that has come along for both her and my dad, and asking what I made of the idea.

My answer was the same as it was at 15, to abandon the life my family spent five years rebuilding to build another one. And once again, they listened to me. Less than three months later we were back in the Middle East, furnishing my family’s new home. I was graduating university this time around and had other plans for myself so I couldn’t permanently join them.

Baggage claim

the love and guilt I carry with me

In conversation with my grandma —the one string that occasionally pulls me back to Cyprus— about our routinely farewells when I was home for Christmas this past holiday, we joked about crying every time we separate. I’ve lost count of the amount of goodbyes and airport drop-offs we’ve had over the years but my grandma, being the deeply sensitive woman that she is —I take after her in that department— has cried every single time without fail.

Seeing her cry sets me off too so I dread our tearful goodbyes. When talking about it with her over dinner that night, I mentioned that I still cry, in spite of wanting to leave. I made a joke about walking around airports and train stations in tears and she laughed. I used to be very stringent with where and who I was allowed to cry in front of, but I let go of that detriment over time. I’m too sensitive to censor my emotions like that. Crying is acceptable on any mode of transport; you never know where someone is heading or what they’ve left behind.

I am sometimes overcome with guilt over being away for so long. My sister and grandma’s tears, —the trigger of my search for regret in my choices— are on my mind often. It is not a rare occurrence for a 20-something year old to be away from home. It is not something I should feel guilty for and when I break down my emotions, I realize my guilt is more rooted in my plans to stay gone, rather than the initial decision to leave. I have had to come to terms with the fact that there will, inevitably, be things that I miss, birthdays and anniversaries.

In reference to my grandparents’ home I once wrote:

‘I hide pieces of my heart in every corner of the house so you can feel me when I’m gone.’ I have to hope that that’s enough.

The eldest daughter role is a very redundant persona I adopt when I find myself back home. It is a role I have a complicated relationship with, because I don’t want to let my family down. I feel the weight that falls on me and obligates me to step up when necessary but this persona often costs me the rest of me, and I think I’m far too young to give up the majority of who I am for the sake of my familial duties. When I leave is when my life feels like it’s my own.

You don't have to be sorry for leavin' and growin' up
You can see the world, following the seasons
Anywhere you go, you don't need a reason

— Harry Styles, Matilda

I’d be lying if I said I haven’t occasionally questioned how different would my life have turned out, had I not moved that first time.

In another life, where I didn’t I move away from the place I was born and raised in halfway through my adolescence, I don’t doubt the wording of every sentence I form in my native language. I’m not as wary of conjoining my life with someone else’s. I pay no mind to the odds that he’ll hold me back, I don’t feel restricted by the idea of being tied down. I didn’t outgrow my home and keeping my options open doesn’t even cross my mind.

I presume I would feel l more secure in where my life is heading because of the directional limitations I would have set for myself, not to stray too far from home. I sit with this fantasy sometimes when I’m back home, letting the picture sink in; and then I leave again.

messages from the same friend I cried on the bathroom floor with, about my most recent move to London

Layover

homecoming limbo and why I still leave

I love my home dearly, its towering palm trees; encircled by the mediterranean sea; sharing my garden with the neighbourhood’s cats; the annual visit of the swallows; the customary generosity of the older generation and their historical resilience.

I still get homesick for the yellow daisy covered fields, every spring. I reminisce on the time when I lived a five minute walk away from my grandparents and was a regular presence in my home friends’ day-to-day lives. I miss my grandma’s chicken soup, my granddad’s cheek, my brother’s hugs and my best friend’s laugh.

I would never change where I am from, spending majority of my formative years on my little island was a luxury. But the more time I spend away, the more I feel like I am spilling over the island’s edge into the sea, whenever I return.

I spent some months back in Cyprus after graduating, post my parents’ move and realized there is nothing for me there anymore. I felt like a puzzle piece that didn’t fit. I realized I refer to Cyprus as home purely out of habit. It hasn’t felt like home in a long time, but it is the only place I’ve known to be one. It will always be the scene of my childhood and my token of it is the memory of my early life’s simplicity, but that is not the life that calls to me —at least not for now. And there was the curiosity again, the urge for something “more” that I couldn’t yet define, and queue the ensuing guilt.

Oh, island, I adore you, but I hate you, too! You’re a prison smothered in flowers, I’ve never been more eager to leave a place behind.

— Margarita Karapanou, The Sleepwalker

Leaving my family, my neighboring beach, my infinite magazine collection and art supplies is not easy to do, but it is the easiest difficult thing. Because it’s better to wonder what could have been if I stayed than the countless what-ifs I’d be haunted by if I hadn’t left. Yes, I fear change and occasionally spiral over the security I could have had by now had I not been too preoccupied with fitting my life in suitcases over and over, but I fear leading a narrow, mediocre life more.

Cleared for takeoff

giving in to the urge to flee

The world is so wide and the more of it I see the wider it becomes. What a waste it would be not to embrace it, not to open up with it when I am being invited to. The more I experience the more I love and the more I miss when I part with it.

Paradoxically, scattering tiny fractions of my heart across the world has not left me feeling hollow; it fills me up more each time. Some of my favourite people in the world I’ve only crossed paths with because I’ve left where I was before. Home is no longer a place, but more of a feeling. I find it more in people than I do in where I sleep.

You will never be completely at home again, because part of your heart always will be elsewhere. That is the price you pay for the richness of loving and knowing people in more than one place.

— Miriam Adeney

I don’t look too far ahead, I don’t have a five-year plan — I hardly even have a one-year plan. On days when I’m down and wish for some stability, I am comforted by the idea that if I don’t find it where I am, I can always search for it elsewhere. I’ve found myself in places I’d never been to before. I hope to find the sense of belonging I’m looking for someday, but until then I make the most of each place and wait —I learned to do that at airport gates and on trains.

My response to my mum on the phone was “you know my answer is always to leave”. I advocated for leaving to my mum at 15 and again at 22. I didn’t realize just how indicative of my outlook that statement was until a few months ago, when I found myself unintentionally advising a course-mate to end her relationship with her partner if he gets in the way of her traveling like she wants to do.

I’m not implying that everyone should walk out on every relationship to pursue alternative lives. But if the option to leave comes along, you have to take it. If there wasn’t a reason for it, the opportunity wouldn’t present itself. There must be a reason for the urge to flee. Even if that urge was born out of my vain, adolescent exaggeration, it is still an itch to scratch.

Leaving does not have to be terminating. It can have a return date. Traveling, moving houses, schools, jobs, it’s all leaving and changing. Learning how to leave is scary but so liberating. I’m more ambitious, more hopeful and curious because of it.

Don’t ask me for advice, I’ll tell you to forget your life. Go where the wind takes you, where your heart is being pulled to, where your mind feels drawn to, a place you read about in a book, somewhere where you heard someone speak fondly of, somewhere you never thought you’d be.

I have been leaving since I was 15. I still don’t know where I’ll end up or if I’ll ever even settle down. No place has felt right enough to stay in just yet. The closest I’ve come to has —controversially— been Brussels, so maybe I’ll eventually find my way back there. Maybe I’ll find someplace even more aligning. Maybe I’ll return to Cyprus.

Or maybe I’ll live my life floating around the globe and paying the price for it by fragmenting my heart in pieces in exchange for memories. Migrate someplace else every once in a while, like the swallows that made a home in my home growing up, year in and year out. I’d leave on a paper plane if I could and I’d go all the way to Jupiter if given the chance.

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