I returned to Bulgaria for the first time as an adult when I was twenty. I’d visited once before – on a family vacation to the Black Sea with my mom, dad, and brother when I was ten. This time, I was older. It was the summer before I graduated from college, and I had been studying abroad in Morocco when I decided to buy a ticket through one of those budget airlines to the city where I’m from – Sofia.
A homecoming of sorts, I’d been planning this trip for quite awhile. The timing felt right, and in a fortuitous turn of events, the money I’d put away for the program I was attending had been replenished by a scholarship I received to cover the cost of attendance.
Having reconnected less than one year before with the woman who’d brought me to the US, I looked forward to my return. She and her husband had offered me a place to stay, they themselves planning a trip for the three of us to the Black Sea.
I remember touching down the day I arrived, with the passengers of the flight clapping – an old Bulgarian tradition to celebrate their arrival (and survival). I laughed. Then I cried. Happy to be back, I soon felt the rush of familiarities long forgotten.
The weeks that followed were life changing. On the flight over I’d made a list of things I wanted to see and do – things I wanted to know and find out.
I saw family and friends, and friends I call family. I reconnected with other family who’d taken me in and cared for me – who thought I was lost, who hadn’t seen or spoken to me since the week I left Sofia.
What most surprised me was what I remembered and how I remembered it. The transformation of memory into truth, through a physical re-witnessing of my surroundings. And in the process of finding “my roots”, I realized something powerful. That home truly is where the heart is, and that it’s possible to feel at home in more than one place. The city was endeared to me for this. And I, in the kindest way, was set free from it.
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