When you love someone very much in Spain, you call them “mi vida,” which means my life. I would hear my friends use it with their lovers, and I would roll my eyes and say how cheesy and dramatic it was. But perhaps deep down, my heart wondered if I would ever have a “mi vida” or if someone would ever say it to me.
Eight years later, finally confident in my own skin and my own circumstances, on the other side of the world in New Zealand, I found “mi vida.” A Chilean expat who found his way to the same place here by way of Spain too. Isn’t it funny how the universe works?
Now we have a beautiful life together, based by the sea in the quirky port town of Lyttelton, just outside of Christchurch. Could I have ever imagined this during all those lonely years? Definitely not.