more dreams and less life

i am feeling really restlessly nostalgic right now, for some reason. it's like my heart is fit to burst. but what's new?

today is my last day in costa rica, a trip i haven't made in four years. it's so strange to think of the place i was in when i came here last - i had just gotten back from london and i was utterly and completely lost. i remember sitting at the table where i'm sitting right now, playing bananagrams with one hand while i facebook-chatted my london friends with the other. i remember being caught between the person i was when i left, and the person i became when i went abroad.

that trip, we went to the beach, and this trip we did too. as i wandered among the rocks of playa escondida i recalled how i would wander last time, skipping stones and agonizing over the boy i was dating and the boy that i was in-over-my-head crazy for. i have never felt so grown up as i did this time around, standing on those rocks and remembering how i didn't have a clue what i was doing, and knowing now that everything turned out all right in the end.

i feel like costa rica is a place that has seen so many sides of me - from the times that i was too young to remember, to the times where i'd roller skate up and down siba's driveway, to y2k and my first taste of champagne, to high school summer breaks and weddings and christmases, to college and the heartbreak of distance and early-twenties angst.

this place has seen all of the good and the bad of my life, and it has managed to give me exactly what i need - whether it's a week at the beach, a stroll in the mall with my family, winding drives up and down the mountains of the countryside, breakfast at my favorite restaurant, or nights spent eating air-popped popcorn and playing board games. i may not have any blood connecting me to costa rica, but it is my second home - other places may come close, but it was always here all along.