A foreigner to its landscape.

A foreigner to its landscape.

I want to go home, but I don’t know where “home” is.

Photo by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash

I grew up in this city. I was born here and raised by my parents. Yet I cannot feel it. I really can’t.

Was it always this way? These buildings, these walls… were they always here? I don’t know.

This city is not mine, and yet I grew up in it. My body cannot feel its pavements nor its streets. My body cracks under my walk and it trembles. The city does not accept me, but I’m in. I’m trapped in it. For God’s sake, I want to leave, but I can’t.

My past is buried beneath the city’s ground. Leaving it would mean forgiving everything that happened here. Everything. And I cannot forgive what happened.

I hate this city and its people. I don’t get them, and they don’t get me either.

Every day, I fake my way through its streets, wearing a mask that has existed for far too long. Its citizens do not see me, and when they do, they just watch their beautiful capital through me as if I were a ghost.

To them, I look like the perfect character for this city. Yet, if they looked closely enough, they would notice that something is horrifyingly wrong.

To me, they look like automata, their brains and paths already written, blindly following the rules of this strange city called Lausanne.

This is my town. Lausanne. I was born here.

Yet I have always been a foreigner to its landscape.