I see the cursor pulsating as fast as my heart. I want to capture that raw feeling on this sheet of paper, but I'm not sure exactly which words to choose. I wish these same words would guide me, embrace me. I'll let them. I'll let them flow, without thinking too much, and I'll listen to my dear writing instructor who nourishes my composition—and my heart, every Wednesday... well, almost every one.

Recently, at a social gathering, someone asked me if I still miss Mexico, and my sincere and immediate reaction, almost visceral, was to answer—"Yes, every day."

"Yes? Every day?" they replied, followed by a brief silence tinged with sadness and confusion as they tried to understand how a life in the United States, accompanied by words like security, tranquility, order, and civility, could not be enough.

And it's precisely the disorder that I miss the most, I thought. But is it really so?

I know this topic pushes me to fall into platitudes I don't want to entertain. Nor do I want to cloud this feeling with clichés like the advantages of a bicultural life and the great gifts it has given us, which, yes, have been many, but I believe it goes much further.

The conversation turned into a listing of the advantages and disadvantages of both places. Each one very personal, wrapped in emotions and according to the experience of whoever expressed them. We agreed on some, disagreed on others. As if each one sought to justify the place where they chose to stand.

Then I decided to share how, to this day, every time I land in Mexico City, I have this feeling of "I'm home."

The collective sadness resurfaced and timidly intruded into the smoke of the lit cigars that enveloped the conversation.

Silently, questions began to flood my mind. Have I arrived? Where? Home? But I don't live there anymore? So, have I never arrived in 20 years? Is it possible to live a life with that feeling of not being home? It terrifies me even to write them because in some bizarre way, Houston is also my home. Where I live is my home. Or is it not? What a strange thing.

After a while, someone, whom despite meeting that day, I felt like I had met long before, asked me, "What do you miss here that you don't have there, and vice versa?" A question I'm sure he has asked himself several times after returning to Mexico after 30 years of living in the United States.

What do I miss here? What would I miss if I went back there?

I don't know what I would miss if I ever returned to Mexico, but what I do know is that here I miss holding my dad's arm every week and accompanying him on his slow walk, hoping for that moment of lucidity where we can talk about tennis, the piano, or horses. His great passions that I was fortunate enough to inherit in life and that he left imprinted on me forever. I miss those words from my mom, which feel just like those of my grandmother, that even though I know she says them to me over the phone, they never feel the same. I miss the complicity with my brother that only intensifies when we see each other and laugh at things only we understand. I miss my husband's family gatherings where fantastic things happen like a Byzantine night or a recitation of poems. I miss the smile of the parking attendant know in Mexico as the “Viene, Viene”, the good morning greeting from that stranger, the noisy music on the street corners, the delicious, dirty, and unregulated food that never upset my stomach, the traffic light with a myriad of stories all happening at the same time, the bustle of the streets, feeling the city's vibe coursing through my body, the contrasts of architecture, the disorder in the streets with houses of different sizes and colors, people dressing up and grooming to go out, regardless of where they come from or where they're going.

I could go on, and on.

The gathering ended, but that feeling of finding an answer never left. After a couple of days, I thought: there are two ways about it, as my dad would say, either you live from a place of longing for everything that isn't there, or you better choose to see what is. What better than to receive what each space gives you when you're there and leap from one to another with immense abundance of what each one gifts you.

Mexico is and will always be my home. My place. With thousands of things tattooed in my essence that keep giving me something every day. Houston will also always be my new place, that space where five people intertwine like unbreakable vines. Because yes, you can have several places in the world where you unfold, reinvent yourself, and rediscover yourself, a thousand times over.

Nostalgia is inevitable. In Mexico, I lived a beautiful childhood and an adolescence full of challenges and friends who made me grow without ever losing that desire to enjoy and discover. Today, I see a different Mexico, but no less luminous than the one in my memories.

And so, I am excited to continue discovering spaces that this life gives me for many more years to come.