Medellín, 25 May 2015

You know me, I’m just like the Pacific. I can be calm one minute and then suddenly break into great powerful waves, which crash down and end up changing the landscape. The things that happen to people, the cycles of the moon, or simply life itself, have led me to a decision that many people find strange, though to us it seems almost obvious. And I want to tell you about it in advance.

As of the first week of July, my husband, my cats and I will no longer live in Medellín. We’ll be residents of Bahía Solano. We’re going to live the dream at the same time as building it.

I’d like to tell you all this in person, to see your face as I speak, and for you to see mine. I so enjoy writing to you, but looking at you as I speak is like reading you twice over.

I’ll tell you a bit more:

We decided a couple of years ago that we were going to go back. And last year we made a five-year plan, which we went on fine-tuning. My work in Medellín was going well, and we decided my husband would also look for a job, while he carried on selling the fish we brought to the city from Bahía Solano.

Well, my husband didn’t find a job and I started to get bored of mine. Then Juana’s mother was diagnosed with late-stage cancer and Luis Miguel had that heart attack, and I took it all very seriously and said: I can’t be anywhere I’m bored; we need to do things every day if we want to be happy and at peace when it’s our time to go, whatever it is that brings us peace. So I decided to quit. And what followed was a search for something that made me happier, or that brought me peace, because over time I’ve discovered that’s what happiness is: feeling at peace and free of unfinished business, including deferred dreams.

On top of all this, as you well know, there’s my endocrinologist’s insistence that I cut down on stress, to see if that helps with my Graves’ disease. My husband pointed out that we didn’t need to wait five years to leave; we could put everything together as we were living it. And the basics would have to be sorted out either there or here. The advantage would be that there, we’d have the sea to soothe us whenever things got tricky. We set about doing the sums, considering our responsibilities, and everything started to flow. That seemed like a good sign, so we decided to leave.

We have enough money to get by for a couple of months, and now we’re weighing up different business ideas, ready to invest and get to work.

Essentially, the dream has always involved this:

Living simply, being near the sea, being near my grandmother again (this one’s mine, but my husband supports it because he knows how much it means to me), building a sustainable house, continuing to strengthen this family of ours, having time to read and write, serving our neighbours (there are many ways of serving), having a steady income that means we can afford this life and all it involves (such as travelling whenever necessary).

Now you can make your own mind up about the reasons for this change; if it’s about aspiration, or desire.

I’d like us to have a coffee together before I go. To do our thing of meeting up and reading, and so I can give you a hug; after all, it’s not every day that a person moves cities, especially after fifteen years in the same place.

Kisses,

Vel