I have lived in many places. I have crossed borders carrying more doubts than suitcases and, even so, there is always a moment before leaving when fear makes me feel small. As if my head were filled with worries, too big, while my body shrinks, fragile, unable to move.
Today I see it so clearly that I can paint it: a painting where the head is that of an adult, but the body shrinks like that of a child, because that’s how fear distorts us. It enlarges our problems and makes us forget that we have the strength to hold ourselves up.
But over the years, I understood something: I don’t adapt to places; I make them mine.
It doesn’t matter if it’s an empty apartment in New York, a room in Bogotá, or an unknown corner in Los Angeles. As soon as I buy oranges at the market, put on some music, and start painting, that space becomes home. Because home is not outside; I carry it within me.
Moving isn’t as hard as the noise in your head makes you believe. What scares us is not the change itself, but the idea we invent about the change. We drown in a glass of water because we look at fear so closely that everything seems bigger than it really is.
Now I know that moving doesn’t mean losing myself, but finding myself somewhere else. Every time I change cities, I discover what truly belongs to me: my rituals, my desire to explore, my way of building refuges where no one knows me, but everything still smells like me.
That’s why I painted that picture. To remind myself that fear will always try to make us feel small. And that the only way not to let it win is to see it for what it is: a glass of water I can drink instead of drowning in it.