Leaving, Learning, Living

What does it mean to leave everything behind? To begin again in a place that knows nothing of you — where streets don’t recognize your footsteps and the air carries unfamiliar names.

As the weight on my back slowly eases, I tell myself I am being reborn.

“April is the cruellest month.”T.S. Eliot’s opening line from The Waste Land has followed me here. What begins as an image of spring and renewal soon turns unsettling, suggesting that rebirth itself can be painful when one feels emotionally barren. That feeling sits close to me now. I am here, newly planted, but not yet blooming.

It didn’t hurt at first.

Not when I left IGI and the airplane lifted off, carrying me through sixteen hours of sky. Not when I took my first steps in a new city, a new country, a new continent — oceans away from what I once called home. Not when I wandered downtown for the first time, nor when I toured my university with a quiet excitement I didn’t yet know how to name.

The hurt arrived later.

It came one night, weeks into my first semester, when I lay beneath a comforter whose color felt strangely familiar. I wanted to sleep beside my mother, to cling to her while my nightmares stole what little rest I had left. By then, I wasn’t sure if I would be going home for winter break — and the thought that I might not see her for months pressed heavily on my chest.

I cried until my body ached.I didn’t want to call her. I didn’t want to worry her.

But I did.

Harbour Square Park | September 5, 2025