Since I was little, I had a recurring dream about the same street.
It was narrow, with old stone buildings and a bakery on the corner. There was a blue bicycle leaning against a wall, and I always felt like I was trying to get home before dark.
I dreamed about that street for years.
When I was twenty-four, I traveled to Europe for the first time. In a small town I had never heard of before, I turned a corner and stopped walking.
There it was.
The street from my dreams.
The bakery was still there. The stone buildings looked exactly the same. There was no blue bicycle, but there was a metal ring on the wall where something could have been chained.
I felt so overwhelmed that I had to sit down.
My friends thought I was having a panic attack. Maybe I was.
But part of me felt like I had finally returned to a place that had been waiting for me.