Sweet Sorrow - Learning to Leave [Venezuela] #1

"Parting is such sweet sorrow." - William Shakespeare

Many of you must have heard or read that quote before. It’s from Romeo and Juliet, and hard to understand without context. The famous couple parts ways, says goodbye, in sorrow, only to meet again tomorrow in great, sweet joy.

Have you ever experienced something like this?

Perhaps you have. Maybe with a girl/boy you liked when you were younger, or your parents when you moved away to college… I’m sure my dog feels something similar when it stares at me in complete depression as I leave the house (only to come back a couple hours later). You could even feel this way about a place, like the beach or a camping site in which you feel at peace.

I feel the same each time I wake up and stare out the window.

I feel the same each time I walk my dog and look at the trees, and the cracked concrete road, and the single-parent household of dogs that live at the corner and always bark at me.

Said trees along said road.

I feel it when driving down the highway, at night, under the cover of darkness that burnt-out streetlamps allow me. My speed isn’t limited by law and order, but only by how much I feel the worn-out tires can take. I’m free, at the cost of freedom.

But that’s a new feeling.

I hate those dogs, who always bark at me when I walk my perpetually sad-faced doggy, and I hate the cracked concrete that reminds me nobody is looking after the road, and I’ve always hated the lack of lights in the highways because the headlights belonging to the big, bad and expensive trucks of those in line with the regime blind me to the point of driving by muscle memory.

But one day, not long ago, as my eyes recovered from the flashes of light and my surroundings came back, I found myself somewhere new. I realized, at that moment, that it wasn’t that same old road I traversed every night and belonged to my daily life.

In just a couple months, it would no longer be my daily life.

Source: El Estímulo

And so with the cracks in the concrete, and the single-mom dog, and the view of the city from my window. The city who’s always been there, challenging, a beautiful lady who’s seen better years, who loves her children but doesn’t know how to raise them, who’s been beaten and forgotten by those who’ve sworn to protect her. Left by those who’ve grown tired of trying.

And I’m leaving too. I don’t know if I’ll ever see it again.

And so with my friends, and my family, and the memories of places and sounds and smells that surround me. I’ll never be blinded by those headlights, nor will I have so swerve to avoid the random bumps and holes on the road, or speed up because two motorcycles behind me have been acting weird for a while. I’ll never laugh with my friends again about having avoided a checkpoint full of cops asking for “some money for coffee”, or rejoice that we found a pizza place where the prices haven’t skyrocketed yet.

My joy comes from leaving behind the blood of innocents, the oppression of armed forces and their ideological puppeteers, the misery and decay of a dying society, but my sorrow comes from the very same things.

So as I drive this long, dark road, I can’t help this feeling of sweet sorrow.

I love the tears that stream down my face each time I look at these things and remember all the good that’s come from the fight to be happy and free in the land of the impossible. All the little things that have made the past 23 years worthwhile despite oppression, misery, and loss.

As Oscar Wilde said, in The Portrait of Dorian Gray:

”Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.”

I won’t meet my Juliet again tomorrow… but I’ll remember the joy we shared, and go find happiness somewhere else.

Learning to Leave is a series on the feelings, anecdotes and thoughts of a soon-to-be expat.

Header image made from Caspar David Friedrich's Wanderer above the Sea of Fog and this picture of El Avila, Caracas' signature mountain.