A moment in Madrid

I remember my last night in Madrid. I remember faintly smelling the exhaust of cars and breathing it in. The smell of exhaust takes me back to being a little girl in the Dominican Republic, feeling the summer air and the itchiness of mosquito bites on my skin. Smelling a combination of fumes, delicious food, and my family’s scent, which was different from my New York city home. It makes me feel small and it makes my heart feel full of wonder and love, of energy that feels almost too big for my body. “Nostalgia” is a word that doesn’t quite fit. While I’m having a moment of remembrance, I’m also there, all over again. It’s a combination of remembering and being that can almost make my head spin if I tried to evaluate it, but my heart says there’s no point. There is no such thing as time and my head will never understand. My heart tells me to embrace it:

I am here and there, I am now and then, there is no difference.

Sure, in that "nostalgic" moment in Madrid, I was a bit drunk. We had just come back inside and were drinking at the flat we had rented. I was on the floor, laughing, my friend and my brother laughing just as much on the couch. The room was spinning a bit. My phone was buzzing with messages from a man I love who I closed my heart to for years. I was miles away from my family who I live to serve. My iPad would not connect to the right server so I could not work on my vacation.

It didn’t matter - it wasn’t the conditions that opened my heart, it was an open heart that gave me that great moment.

It didn’t matter that I was drunk, that I had great company, that I was chatting to a lover, that I was away from my family, that I had no work to do. What mattered was my heart. I allowed it to open, to be full of love, and, even though I didn’t consciously know it then, I was connected with God and I was happy. That was the best night of my entire trip.

(Also posted on Medium blog.)