182. I've been searching for a place to call "home" my entire life and I found it.

Is this what they mean when they say that you can leave a city, but it never really leaves you?

I boarded the bus in the city I know by heart, feeling a humming in my bones as we pulled away. I was on the bus to visit my family in Cádiz, and before the bus had even moved, I knew the exact route we’d be taking to get there. I can close my eyes and trace the route from start to finish. I know where the tolls and traffic lights are, how many roundabouts we pass. With my eyes shut, I follow the gentle sway of the bus, knowing exactly where we are, which bend we just took.

I haven’t been back to this city since 2020, and every time I’ve thought of it, all I’ve been able to conjure is memory after memory, triggering different moments of my life as rapid flashes. Scene one, university. Scene two, moving in together. Scene three, the pandemic. Scene four, moving to the city center. Scene five, leaving university. Scene six, being very lost in life. Scene seven, filling a van with our belongings and moving to Barcelona.

Málaga is where my life first felt full of joy, and the heavy cloud that had followed me around until then was dissolved by someone’s love and care. I was reborn in that city. A blank slate. A fresh start.

T-shirt by @hrysct for @rodeo.digital

My friend at the time and I had planned to move to Granada for university and had found an apartment we called “the green one” because all of the kitchen cabinets were lime green, but life happened, and we ended up studying in Málaga in the student dorms her older sister had lived in. I went along with it, excited about simply moving away from my town, and a month later, I met him—the person who would dissolve the cloud and bring nothing but sun into my life. He lived in the same student dorms as I did, where there were over three hundred rooms, yet his room was behind the door opposite mine. I like to think it was fate because neither of us were meant to be there, but life led us to each other.

Until now, every time I replayed those memories, my heart ached with nostalgia, knowing they lived only in the past. Some of my happiest moments occurred in that city by his side. We grew up together in that city. We met at eighteen and left at twenty-three. Our biggest growth spurts took place inside that city’s walls. We discovered who we wanted to be on Calle Álamos. We found our jobs on Calle Quasimodo. We dived headfirst into speciality coffee in Plaza de los Mártires. I discovered contemporary fiction on Calle Cárcer. I danced in Plaza de Uncibay. And then I cried as I left Andalucía, knowing it would be difficult for me to move back.

The bus I was on drove past where we first met in the student dorms, and I grabbed my phone to send him a video. Everything was exactly the same. The church opposite even had the same discolored sign hanging from its walls. Avenida de Andalucía was packed with cars in all three lanes, and I remembered how long I’d sat in traffic on “el 31” on my way home. In a way, it felt like I’d never left. I still felt like I was about to get off the bus to walk home and put my key in the lime green doors our rooms had.

Our go-to petrol station had been taken over by a different brand and didn’t look familiar, but everything else was exactly as we’d left it. Over WhatsApp, we began to list all of the things that hadn’t changed. El Palacio de Ferias hadn’t changed at all; they were still designing their promo signs in the exact same way as they were seven years ago. They hadn’t opened the new road everyone was talking about when we lived there. Our student dorm building was still yellow and white. Carrefour was still open, along with Burger King. The gym we went to and hated was still above the supermarket, with its black and yellow colours.

I’m sure many parts of the city have changed and that my most frequented places are no longer there or open, but other things don’t change.

I’ve spoken and thought a lot about my roots and where home is, coming from being born into a British family and then growing up in different homes in Spain. Nowhere ever felt like home. They were places I belonged to and had a history in, but they never felt like home. I can’t go to the UK and feel at home—everything feels strange and foreign; I don’t know where anything is or where to go. I can’t go to the town where I grew up without being followed by a hundred ghosts. They aren’t my safe or happy place, and when I think of a home, I think of a warm, comforting place you never want to leave.

As soon as I stepped foot in Málaga, I felt like I was home. I knew exactly how to get out of the train station and where the closest exit to the main street was without thinking about it. As I stood in the center of the station, I was bombarded again by quick flashes of past memories: picking him up after a long Christmas in different parts of Spain, seeing la Yaya walk next to Mamá to come and stay for the month of August, seeing Tato grow a tiny bit more each time he crossed the automatic doors. These memories made my heart grow, and I wanted to save the images I had in my mind in a vault to never lose them again.

Everything felt familiar and, in a way, felt like it was mine. I owned my life and my memories that took place in this city. The city was mine too. I belonged to this place because my roots had grown deep in this city’s land, and no matter how far away I went, I would always have my space in the ground where my roots were. I felt like I was walking on solid ground. I was in a safe space. I was home.

My body knew it was at home in this city because I felt heavy. My feet moved slowly as they walked, my arms hung by my side as I wandered around, my heartbeat slowed down knowing there was no danger to fight off, my eyes no longer jumped from one thing to another because there was no new stimulus to take in—everything was exactly as I knew it. I felt calm, and I could let go.

When I walked around the streets of Madrid, I had one eye on Google Maps guiding me while my other eye was constantly scanning up, down, left, and right to make sure we were safe. New shops, new roads, buses that went to unknown places, metro stations that appeared out of the concrete like volcanoes. My city felt calm and like home.

Wandering around Málaga feels like walking through my own home in the dark—I don’t need to reach for the walls or turn on the lights; my body simply knows the way. This big city feels as safe as the rooms inside my home. Each street is like a corridor in my house. Each plaza is like a chunk of grass in my garden. Each restaurant is like a tree that never moves. I can get there without thinking—my body knows the way.

I’ve been asking myself how a place can feel like home ever since I was a lost teenager, and now I know the answer. I know where home is, and I know that no matter where I end up in the world, there is one place that I belong to. There is one place I can name by street names. There is one place I can close my eyes, let go, and feel safe in.

The good news is that cities don’t have legs to get up and leave, and they don’t have a heart to feel the desire to move on to somewhere new, so whenever my heart feels brittle and lost in the world, I can always go home.

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