I’m sit­ting in the Grey­hound bus to Ottawa. And I’m crying.

My bag on my lap, a Coke in my hand. I’m star­ing at the win­dow and the land­scape is flash­ing by. Way too quickly — the bus dri­ver is going fast, very fast. We are pass­ing all the big trucks on the free­way, which isn’t such a good idea con­sid­er­ing it’s get­ting dark and it’s still icy. I do like I always do when I’m not in con­trol and there isn’t much I can do: I close my eyes and I let myself be car­ried away by the engine’s hum­ming sound and vibra­tion. I learned this trick in Latin Amer­ica: we took so many night buses, so many deadly rides, full speed as if we were sucked in by the black tar.

The sun is set­ting on the hori­zon. There is still a lot of snow on both sides of the road. The sce­nary is Canada’s picture-perfect. Sym­met­ri­cal rows of trees on both sides of the road, a broad free­way cut­ting in-between, flat land as far as the eye can see. A beau­ti­ful sun­set in the crisp cold sky. Not a sin­gle cloud. The sky fades in gra­di­ent col­ors: blue to navy blue to dark blue. In the right cor­ner of the win­dow, a red stain, the sun, slowly hid­ing behind the forests.

Been there, done that. I left and I arrived so many times I lost track of it. Cor­rer es mi des­tino. To run is my des­tiny. And I chose mine.

I could have had a sim­ple life. I grew up in a nice city in a first world coun­try. I didn’t escape mis­ery, war or poverty. I escape bore­dom, no future and narrow-mindedness.

But Bono is wrong. It so doesn’t take a sec­ond to say good­bye. It takes ages, it’s painful, it’s a dif­fi­cult exer­cise that makes me feel like a cow­ard every sin­gle time. Am I still run­ning away? It seems like I left a lit­tle piece of my heart in every sin­gle place I have ever been to. It seems like I made an art of aban­don­ing peo­ple. None of that is prob­a­bly true but just think­ing of it just makes me sob harder.

– Are you sad to come back?

I’m sad because I don’t know whether I’m com­ing back or leav­ing. I’m sad because I don’t know when I will be where. I’m sad­der when peo­ple are sad around me. And I wish I belonged some­where, any­where but some­where. I have so many rea­sons to be sad that I don’t even see why I should be happy right now.

I am La Desa­pare­cida in France, I am a 老外 (or even a 白鬼子) in China, I am a gringa in Latin Amer­ica, I am a refused alien in the USA, I am “French but not Que­bec French, France French” in Canada, and I don’t even know when I have the chance to be myself. I change my life like one changes his under­wear and I end up not know­ing who I am. French in Canada, Cana­dian in France, no one every­where or some­one nowhere?

I lost my roots and the abil­ity to see the world in black or white. Every­thing looks grey now, noth­ing is that easy. Hard to have the usual prej­u­dices on peo­ple when you’ve trav­eled the world and shared their lives. Hard to truly believe in pol­i­tics either, after see­ing the ben­e­fits and down­sides of every­thing. And above all, hard to be patri­otic with­out an homeland.

I’m lost.

A few years ago, in San Pedro, gringo city in Lago de Ati­tlán, South­ern Guatemala. Good place for deep philo­soph­i­cal ques­tions. I had asked Feng where he belonged. We were sit­ting in a bar, drink­ing what would cer­tainly be too much. “La mai­son pas”, he had answered in bro­ken French. “No home”. This is me now, this is us now.

Ottawa. This is where I get off. For now.

Related arti­cles:

1. Two Soli­tudes And One Loneliness
2. French Pas­tries
3. I Belong Here… And There Too
4. Scar Tis­sue
5. The Nos­tal­gic Chameleon