Found My Patch of Green Grass

Since I've been in Brussels, I've formed a sight-seeing routine. After work I usually go for a walk around wherever I'm staying for an hour or two and get to really know the area. Weekends I spend like a normal tourist and go see all the tourist traps. Yesterday I went up to Laeken which houses mini-Europe, the Atomium and the royal Palace among other things. I did all the touristy things for a bit and then got distracted by some interesting side streets notably, Avenue des Robiniers. Bordering this street on the southern side is a wonderfully magnificent park.

While I was walking around in it, completely overwhelmed with amazement, I realized that I could see myself settling down in Brussels. And that thought absolutely terrifies me.

I am really afraid of settling down. When I was a kid, my mom moved us around a lot because she was studying at various places. We didn't move as much as some people, namely some military families, but it was always just when I was really starting to get comfortable in a place, when I was starting to really put down roots in a place, that we would pack up and move. So there is at least part of me that is just really afraid of being in one place for the rest of my life because it is just something so new to me, something that I don't understand. But at the same time, having one place to be home, to be mine has been one of my most profound desires, I guess. It's something that I have held on to but the thought still terrifies me even now that I'm 23 and out on my own. 

Anyway, I've found, for the first time in my life, that I can actually see myself in this city for the rest of my life. Even after a day to turn this over in my head, that sounds so final that I want to run away from it. As I was walking around in this garden I saw myself there 5, 10, 30 years on down the road. 

I walked down through the neighborhood south of the park and when I saw this street I suddenly just knew, like I have never known anything in my life before that when I'm ready to settle down, it's going to be in Brussels and that when I'm ready to have a family, I'm going to raise my kids here. You know when you're watching a movie and there is a couple that falls in love and they just know, they don't have any reason to explain it or any rationalization, they just know, that's I feel about ending up in Brussels. It wasn't even that I decided that I want to live here, it just hit me that I'm going to. 

When that came to me, I was throughly terrified because I am in no way ready to stay in one place for a long time; I want to see everything and learn everything and ... I don't know, just see the world. And there is no way in hell I'm ready to have kids but I realized walking around this area, that I don't have to be ready yet but when I am, I want to end up back here. For the rest of the day, and even now when I think back to it, I had a feeling of really intense calm, like everything was right with the world.

And the kicker of it all is that, I'm pretty sure that no matter how many other cities I see in the mean time, I'll still want to live in Brussels. And that is a completely new feeling to me, believing that I won't find greener grass anywhere else in the world.