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There is no shortage of excuses not to do it. My significant other, the time, the money and the timing, my business. Every string attached weighs dearly on the ping pong of thoughts in my head, causing cacophonies since that moment, 225 days ago, this thought first crossed my mind. I shall travel to Chile. For a month. All by myself. Should I stay or should I go? I have this strange feeling life is always elsewhere, home is never where I am. Therapy says, more than hashtagFOMO, the problem is I don't have a home in myself. So here I am, taking this imperfect relationship between me, myself and I on a solo trip. Part running from, part running towards, way across the world, way out of my comfort zone. Should I stay or should I go? This is the chorus I keep hearing on repeat, sometimes with a full orchestra of uncomfortable bodily sensations, like when I confirmed the money transfer for the nonrefundable plane ticket, 49 days ago. Sometimes with a bitter aftertaste, as my sister declares this trip is so me and just a whim; or colored in uncharacteristic zen hues as friends ask me jokingly if this is my eat, pray, love journey of rediscovery. The same chorus pops up when he talks about my rapidly approaching trip, half worried that I'm going far away, by myself, and he stays far behind, by himself, half proud that I'll be enjoying all those Chilean wines. As the countdown app reaches 21, I have to listen to the chorus with renewed forces when I break the news to my grandmother. It's nothing that she herself wouldn't have done, if things in her time had been different this way. But this doesn't make it easier for either of us and the words pop back in my head, like a neon tag line for a soul-searching adventure dramedy: should I stay or should I go? Incapable of any planning, I just make sure roaming option is on. I read the Wikipedia article about Chile and some Neruda. I know where I'm going to sleep for the first couple of nights and I buy my travel insurance as I'm about to board. I'm lucky I'm not fussy about food and I can sit on a bench, watching people walk by for hours on end. I speak a bit of Spanish, learned from the Thalia telenovelas of my childhood years. I pack way too much, forgetting people sell and wash t-shirts all around the world. It's a sunny morning, buzzing with hellos and farewells, when I head out of the Arturo Merino Benítez airport. Spanish instructions urge me from the ticket office to the bus heading downtown. I carefully follow the trip on the map, swaying in the rhythm of this familiar, yet foreign vehicle, I have been known to get off one stop too early or three stops too late. The central square is alive with people knowing where they come from, but, more importantly, where they are going. I take some steps, in one direction and then another, tentatively, my tested and proven method of checking to see how the dot that I am moves closer or farther away from where I need to go to, for a shower and a nap. This dance might look less weird without the red backpack making it obvious that, had I not been lost, surely I wasn't found. Once the direction is clear and all the taxi offers politely refused with rusty gracias, I pick up the pace, nothing can put a spring in one's step quite like a bathroom emergency. As I walk confidently, taking in the air, the voices, the shapes of Santiago de Chile, a bunch of pigeons welcome me with a collective lucky... cagada. This might be a sign to play the lottery or just the break I needed from my strides to remember seeing, out of the corner of my eye, some giant and yummy strawberries on a stall a block back. Every journey forward is, at least in part, about going back. Fresas, por favor. Mil pesos.