Spending weeks in your hometown is like opening an old book with a roller coaster of emotions. Each morning brings a map of memories that insists on unfolding, the sidewalk where you learned to run, the window where you watched life go by, the gate that kept secrets and laughter. In a few hours the local routine fits your body like a familiar garment, and at the same time everything seems new, as if the city had changed its face while you were away. There is a strange sweetness in recognizing every corner and a melancholy in realizing that time left marks you did not know how to carry.
Seeing the street where you grew up and learned to read is a meeting with versions of yourself that no longer exist. There you played, fell in love, fell down, cried, kicked a ball and dreamed dreams that now sound almost comic for being so big. Each step is a small shock of memory: a smell that triggers a laugh, a sound that brings back an entire conversation. With every walk I stumble and an automatic smile opens, it seems I lost the ability to walk on the ground where I once ran.
The question of what really matters arises at every moment. Collecting ephemera, accumulating shallow encounters, living relationships that float on the surface can be comfortable and even pleasurable for a while. The surface has shine and lightness, and there are days when that is enough to warm you. But there is a different hunger that is only satisfied when a friend or brother, after many beers, looks into your eyes and says with passion: “I need you.”
When a mate who grew up with you confesses that you are missed, something shifts inside the chest. Those words are not just sound, they are an invitation to become whole again, to occupy a space that only you know how to fill. They turn conversations into a harbor, meetings into shelter, and make memories gain weight and meaning. Suddenly the whole city seems less like a set and more like living fabric, stitched by voices that recognize your presence.
Nothing replaces the warmth of an embrace from someone who truly knows you, it is an old and effective medicine, capable of dissolving the stiffness of the days and putting the heart back in place. It is in that gesture that belonging is confirmed, that you feel you are not just passing through, but that you belong to someone and to some place. The hug is the most honest language I know, without need for explanations. Or jokes, smiles, play that only you and yours understand.
Speaking of places, the stadium of my heart club. Since childhood it is a refuge for all my emotions, nothing pays for that, it is beautiful. The bars where I lamented after a week of work, the simple restaurants where I ate lunch during work breaks. Returning home is to realize that the depth of relationships is not measured by frequency but by intensity. And so we go on, collecting steps, embraces and words that remind us who we are and where we belong.
I write this under unbearable heat, I thought it would be a rainy period, but apparently the sun arrived with me, while nervous mosquitoes taste my blood under the table and my grumpy father works in the living room. Everything seems small and trivial, but it does not need to be different, there are many worlds and mine is here.
Nothing is as cozy as a strong hug from a dear friend, they truly know me.
