**Written at a noisy starbucks with lousy service in Mexico City. I’m only here for the reliable internet access. I swear.

So here we go.

I promised myself that I would keep a travel blog, partly because I want the people who I love to be able to follow my escapades around Latin America, and partly because I want to reflect on what traveling does for me. What it does for (and to) my introspective half. The half that critically analyzes how people read me, how they respond to my limp wrist, my nocturnal 5-inch heels, and my patchy 5-oclock shadow. She[1] debuts at one in the morning on weekday nights and at three in the morning on weekend nights, in between bites of greasy chicken tenders and gulps of….juice. I seem to be her favorite subject to analyze. She wonders why I obsess over exercise (and never quite exercise enough), why I refuse to join a Finals Club (Final?.....nobody gives a fuck), and why I have a slightly unhealthy obsession with YouTube instructional videos and female emcees…..and Frida Kahlo.

She’s also trying to figure out why I decided to leave home for seven months.

My family jokingly says that I spontaneously leave the country for months at a time when I get homesick. And oddly enough, this seems to be true. Despite having an incredible semester, with supportive friends, wonderful classes, and an amazing romance (that was unfortunately cut too short), I decided to pack up and leave home for a few months. Not necessarily because I’m homesick, but because I miss feeling like I belong. I miss feeling at home.

A friend once told me that humanities students have the most mental health issues, not because we’re unhappy, but because after learning how to close-read like pros, we turn our analytic tools to ourselves. We close read the shit out of our own lives. Line by line, word by word, accent by accent, and find ourselves watching spoken word poetry and listening to Erykah Badu at 4am.

At least I do.

So after hours of nocturnal one-on-ones with my more critical half, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m not exactly happy at Harvard. Homesick, for me, quite literally means being sick of “home”, or rather, being sick of what should be home. Home isn’t Harvard. And I don’t know if it ever will be. At least that’s what she--my introspective half-- told me over a cup of hierba buena last night.

One of my true homes is LA. Southeast Los Ángeles. A few minutes from the I-10 West, on the intersection of two major streets, where las vecinas still call me el hijo del chino and las maestras call me “cha-chwa”, el hijo de la Señora Ofelia. This is home. For now.

Being homesick at Harvard has everything to do with missing home, and yet nothing  to do with the physical place I call home. It’s about being tired of feeling perpetually exhausted, of having to pencil in close friends for lunch and not being able to have candid conversations with strangers without having them guess “what” I am. It’s about getting 7 hours of sleep, and still feeling like I haven’t slept in days. My therapist, a clever woman with salt and paper hair and glasses that hug the tip of her nose, tells me that I need to sleep more. That I do too much. That I confuse depression for extreme exhaustion. And that I need to practice taking deep breaths.

I tried.

I really did.

try. But the cold air pinches my nostrils and the smell of dusty books gives me migraines.

I think this is why I left. Because I miss being able to breath. The last time I took a deep breath was when I was in Rio de Janeiro. I had just gotten terrible news from home, and spent a few days trying to cope with the news. I remember feeling dizzy. Like the blood always gathered at the tips of my fingers, slowly pulling my body forward. I remember standing next to Christ the Redeemer atop Corcovado. I was thinking about my family, about my two siblings in the ICU, and about how I was powerless halfway across the world. I was trying not to have a panic attack. Just focus on the present, on living in the moment, I told myself. Even if only for a second.

So I stood tall, opened my arms, and I prayed. I prayed for what felt like hours.

And I miss

That feeling. 

Every breath was crisp. Fresh. I was finally learning how to live. And how to breathe.

So I decided to go back to Rio de Janeiro, stopping in México along the way. This blog is dedicated to my year abroad, and to the stories that must be told.

This is an awkwardy long post, the first (hopefully) of many to come. I promise that the next won't be as touchy, awkwardly introspective, and won't have as many precisely places commas and pauses. But it's time for dinner, so I'm off.

Here’s to deep breaths. And to happiness.

Un abrazo,

Josh

Espero alegre la salida y espero no volver jamás. (Frida)

---

[1] She doesn’t have a name. (Yes she.) Well at least not yet.