I’m writing from Brussels airport. I’ve been stuck here for 3 hours, and still have another 3 hours to wait until my next flight.
Where am I heading? Home.
Where do I come from? Home.
This feels like the story of my life. Home is where your loved ones are. But where is it when those you love live in different countries?
When my boyfriend and I decided to move together in Copenhagen, we knew it wouldn’t be easy to be far from our friends and family, even though it is famous for being home of the happiest people in the world. We read a lot about expats’ experience, and many of them were saying that being far from them is something you never get used to. You may get used to missing them, but you never stop missing them.
Airports hold a very ambiguous place in my heart. I have loved them for many years: they were synonyms of holidays, summer breaks, exotic trips, exciting journeys.
My love-hate relationship with them started in August 2015, when I left my country alone for the first time, to move to Northern Sweden for a year. This was one of the most heartbreaking goodbyes I had ever experienced, if not the very most. And yet, it was for all the best reasons: I was about to live the Erasmus dream! I cried again when I left Sweden, to move back home. This goodbye was heartbreaking as well, because I had fallen in love with the country, a year later.
And then started the longest year of my life. A long-distance relationship, France-Spain, with my boyfriend. The airports’ agents saw me crying twice: of joy, at the arrival, and a few days later, of sadness, on departure day.
This year, another long-distance relationship. Denmark-France, with my family. This one is probably the weirdest. Sad to leave my boyfriend, happy to see my family. Sad to leave my family, happy to see my boyfriend. A perfect recipe to twist your mind and squeeze your heart.
Airports are one of the few places that see human-beings in all possible states. If you ask me, I’ll probably say I hate them because they play with your feelings so easily: they’re like a rollercoaster. In the end, they’re just buildings. They don’t really care about our feelings. We’re just humans, after all.
What’s your experience with airports? Do you love them, hate them, don’t mind them?
A Rainy Day in Copenhagen 