Vilnius. My hometown, the gorgeous capital of Lithuania. The city I was born and raised in is now a prime example of mesmerising urban development. After five years of living between Norway and England, I suddenly felt a pull to come back. Me and Vilnius reunited, both of us finding ourselves in a truly delicate state.
Hard Landing
The circumstances of my return were not what I was planning for myself, to say the least. I would always aim to come back victorious in one way or another, a grand romantic, career, or personal achievement to celebrate, a holiday to commemorate.
Unfortunately, at the end of this summer, my return was due for the exact opposite reasons. This summer my world collapsed and my mental health followed suit.
When you feel unstable, it is advised to ground yourself and connect back to your roots. Sometimes working on your Root chakra and walking barefoot in the forest is more than enough. In tougher times, though, you need to fly your sorry little bum back to where that bum was born. And so I did.
I arrived straight into the arms of my exceptionally loving parents, a handful of my good friends, and most certainly into the embrace of Vilnius.
Vilnius and I have a long and beautiful history. We’re tight, yo. But during these past five years, I’ve never stayed long enough on my fleeting celebratory visits to truly acknowledge just how much it has already changed, and how it keeps on changing at a rapid pace. I do recognize the core bits that will never disappear, it seems, similarly to the core characteristics of my own being. However, let’s face it, we did grow apart.
This time to me the city came across as loud, dusty, extremely busy, and scorching hot – not unlike my brain. Reconstruction works in Vilnius on the grandest scale I’ve seen so far was and still is a perfect reflection of my inner reconstruction I’m going through right now.
If I scanned the neuroactivity of my overworked, overstressed, post-traumatic brain and put the flattened image across the map of constructions in Vilnius, I bet my bottom dollar there would be enough congruence between the two to give anyone goosebumps.
We’re vibing just at the right frequency. We’re both going through some major developments. We’ll never be the same and yet, curiously, we’ll always stay ourselves.
The Only Way Out Is Through
Upon my arrival sitting still in the cradle of my life was the hardest thing to do.
A week in, I was itching to run, run away somewhere completely new again, to open up a fresh new page, to relocate to a place where nobody knows me, where I could reinvent myself yet again. But what I think I actually need to do is to remember who I am and who I always was and will be. To reconnect with my personal origins, my roots, my core. To become myself again by unbecoming everything that I am not. And then, continue my life journey from there.
While I’m trying to rediscover where my heart belongs, I might as well reside at the place it first started beating, where it once was pure and untamed, wild and innocent, big and wide open. Where it loved for the first time, where it was broken for the first time. Where I managed to heal, many times…
The city got quieter and calmer since the golden autumn had taken over the paintbrush and the microphone. The constant noise of bulldozers, jigsaws, excavators, and diamond blades that used to torment my nervous system up until the wee hours of the morning have subsided. Curiously enough, the digging, shovelling, screwing, and drilling processes inside my head have also somewhat dwindled. Now it’s time for the renewal phase that is less on the nose, I suppose.
Perhaps it is this newly-found solidarity with my hometown Vilnius that made me realize it’s exactly the place I need to be at right now.
For a little while longer, you know, just a little while longer.
Until the dust settles, the cement dries, and the new roads come to life.
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Artwork in featured image: Charcoal sketch; self-portrait by Audra Bajori
