But how to tell a story that now spans for over two years?

I stare at the now nearly empty bottle of Albariño and wipe my lips. Neko stares from the window and divides his attention between the birds that bathe in the puddles of fresh rain, and my faint sighs.

Perhaps this is a story better told from back to front, in a day in which important things in my life come to an end, and long efforts finally come to rest. I say goodbye to a life project and drink to what it has brought me. The towel dries, the goggles are stored.

I look at pictures of a sultry summer , and a place where the mountains around Bejar crown the Castilian heat with timidly placed patches of snow. A place where my younger cousin forms a new family and where I laugh at old memories with cousin and aunt. A place where the craving for family time is shortly quenched with copious amounts of pork and wine in Segovia, the Viaduct a sentinel of epochs and stories developing under its shade.

I think of the past few months of blissful and uneventful routine. Feet that are not as itchy, and months spent in between the hypnotic hours in the swimming pool, in the comfort of friends’ home cooking, and in the earthy smell of Neko, the rescue cat that has given my house the title of ‘home’.
Hospital runs, and empty sad drives home. Walks in the Irish capital at the mercy of a never ending conflict of happy and sad memories. A rollercoaster of emotions from a life that seems to have gone by.

I look through my photos to remember adventures, to remember feelings: the burn in my cheeks of the snowy days in the Cooleys, the numerous gin and tonics at the pub on Christmas Day, the walk in the warm winter rain in Tenerife, the laughter and philosophical conversations on my stepsister’s visit to my house in Ireland, the stiff necks looking up at the Aurora Borealis in the backyard.

I sip and remember. ‘What about that time in the Stans? The time I convinced my long-time friend Courtney to meet in Abu Dhabi only to be met in Almaty with a taxi scam.’
I remember it did not matter the next morning, when we indulged in Syrniki pancakes with sour cream and olive jam by Kabanbay Street, and spent the rest of the day sipping on coffee and walking in a city that reflected Soviet brutalism over the wet puddles of fresh autumnal rain.

A picture of the Almaty Metro reminds me of how deep the city took us underground, and a picture taken in the Almaty Lake reminds me of how high we hiked in summer gear, shivering at the sigh of a high-altitude turquoise mirage over the snow line.

Scrolling, I see smiles glistening under ethereal sunshine. High up in the Ala Archa mountains of Kyrgyzstan, where phone signal was scarce, and air was pure. Where yurts perched atop valleys of glacial water, and hot springs with really bad pizza provided us with relief after days of hiking in between colourful peaks of snow and grassy fields. I remember unwinding in a Bishkek of leafy boulevards, amongst locals indulging in cotton candy in the local parks.

How could I forget the bus journey from hell, four border crossings in the middle of the night, and the feeling of sweet relief when arriving in Tashkent.
Uzbekistan would have not been the same without the relaxed afternoons in the Tashkent City Park, in which I wondered of how one of the most air tight dictatorships in the world can transition so rapidly into a knock-off Disneyland at Magic City, or how many bizarre romances must the Hotel Uzbekistan has seen through its doors, while standing stern across from the equestrian image of an Amir Temur that screams for Uzbek tradition to linger.

Few places in the world are as special as Samarkand, a crossroad of trade routes and one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta called it splendid, I call it a refreshing oasis of culture. I remember the smell of fresh coffee in the early morning while the street cleaners swiped through the empty streets before the morning rush. A desolate Registan Square awaiting to be explored and exposing a veil of turquoise tiles lining up against the clear blue sky.

Across the border in Tajikistan, I remember shouting to the echoing mountains atop the Fann range, overlooking at a land that felt so beautifully remote and so alien to our lives back home.

I close my eyes to remember the Summer Olympics at home, and Celine Dion crowning the Eiffel Tower in the opening ceremony. I remember the weekend in Cornwall with a barbecue overlooking an orange sunset over St. Ives, a hike up the mountains around Lake Como, and a discussion about new life priorities with old friends in Oleggio and Milan.

One year ago, when life started to be different, one year too long.