Status Updates From Todo lo que tengo lo llevo ...

The camp stretches on and on, bigger and bigger, from my left temple to my right. So when I talk about what’s inside my skull I have to talk about an entire camp. I can’t protect myself by keeping silent and I can’t protect myself by talking. I exaggerate in one case just as I do in the other, but I WAS THERE doesn’t fit in either. And there’s no way of getting it right.

By now I’ve realized that what’s written on my treasures is THERE I STAY. That the camp let me go home only to create the space it needed to grow inside my head. Since I came back, my treasures no longer have a sign that says HERE I AM or one that says I WAS THERE. What’s actually written on my treasures is: THERE I’M STUCK.

Little treasures have a sign that says, Here I am.
Bigger treasures have a sign that says, Do you remember.
But the most precious treasures of all will have a sign saying, I was there.

Now I was someone else. We knew each other in a way we no longer were and never would be again. Being a stranger is hard, but being a stranger when you’re so impossibly close is unbearable

I knew they’d been more frightened than surprised when I came back—there had been relief but no joy. By staying alive I had betrayed their mourning.
Ever since I came back, everything had eyes. And all the things saw that my ownerless homesickness was not going away.