A Way Back

Hay que ser, hay que sentir y hay que regresar al lugar donde más dolió.

After the initial shock and grief that consumed my life following my grandmother's death, I began writing as a way to make sense of my thoughts and feelings. I'd find myself crying uncontrollably through daily life, but almost a year after her death, I was finally able to put some of my pain into words. I remember one instance when I was driving to the beach, thinking it would somehow cure my grief, where I cried so much that the road felt as if it would swallow me whole. It was then, with the mix of speeding and low visibility through my tears, that I knew this type of grief wasn't sustainable.

Our minds are strange in the way they react to sorrow. Losing her was the first time I truly felt loss as an adult, and it shattered me, sending me into a period of profound pain and a ruptured identity. It also pulled me away from my second home, the Dominican Republic. Slowly, I began removing my roots from the place we once shared, only to find myself feeling even more lost away from my family and friends. In abandoning the life I had known with her, I abandoned a large part of myself.

But somehow, as time went on, I was able to write again through blurry eyes, the words I had locked away inside my heart. Through writing Mamá, I began to understand my grief, my then nihilistic outlook on life, and the questions that suddenly seemed impossible to answer without her.

Now I can smile when I talk about my abuela and drive past by her old place thinking not only of the memories we shared, but of what I now realize was one of the happiest times in my life. There was a time when I thought I would never come back to Santo Domingo. Now, with my life going through so many changes, I find myself called back to the place I called home a decade ago, trying to find the parts of me I had lost in order to survive the pain.