Some habits don’t break when you travel. They just wait patiently for you to return to them.
I’ve always loved movies –especially on the big screen. The blockbusters. The kind that demand darkness, surround sound, and complete surrender. That love started early.
Growing up, Sundays were sacred. The only day we had off. My dad and I had a ritual: double features every Sunday. There were no streaming options, no trailers flooding the internet, no sense of what we were missing –because we didn’t know any better.
Movies took time to reach us, four to five months. And when they did, they arrived like events. We would hear stories about a movie from vacationers who been to the United States and salivate waiting for it to arrive.
Sunday meant two choices: laze the day away at the beach or spend four or five hours in an air-conditioned movie theatre. We usually chose the theatre. It was cooler, darker, and somehow felt bigger than the world outside.
I still remember the first time I saw The Terminator. Robots from the future. Time travel. Fate. I was completely hooked. That was the moment something clicked –cinema wasn’t just entertainment; it was imagination unleashed.
Then came video rentals. We join the renting business too. In the world of business, my parents sold everything and anything. We followed the trends. Video rentals was starting to boom.
Suddenly, I had access to everything. Any genre. Any era. I watched relentlessly. Rewound obsessively. This was the beginning of my film-buff phase, though I didn’t have the language for it yet. I just knew movies made me feel more alive.
Fast forward to Costa Rica.
The craving never left.
Golfito, however, was too far from San José the only place where movies regularly play in English. So when I finally visited the capital, there was no hesitation. I went straight to the cinema.
And I was stunned.
Leather reclining chairs. Massive screens. Sound so crisp it felt physical. They had outdone Canadian theatres, without question. Somehow, in a Latin American country, the movie-going experience had leveled up beyond what I’d known back home. It wasn’t just the movies –technology here surprised me more than once.
I sank into the seat, stretched out, and felt something familiar return.
Joy.
Comfort.
Belonging.
For a few hours, the world narrowed to a rectangle of light. And just like that, my 120-day chip from Movieholics Anonymous –MA– was gone.
No regrets.
Some addictions aren’t meant to be cured. They’re meant to be honoured.
Because wherever I go –no matter how far, how remote, how quiet– there will always be a part of me looking for the nearest big screen, waiting for the lights to dim.
And when they do, I’m home.