I was feeling slightly edgy all day today, and then I realised it's probably because I'm going back to my native city tomorrow after just over 10 years.
As I took a break from work and stepped out of the office for a few minutes, I went to stand right in the ray of sunshine, my head to the blinding skies, just... feeling.
Paris, laide ville, mais tes quais sont si beaux,
Et le long des berges ou coule la Seine
L'or des cieux se reflette dans l'eau...
I'm going back tomorrow for a day, and I don't know what to expect. I'll be facing another life, that of my childhood, gone forever never to be again.
To walk again back where I grew up... to see the buildings, the streets, the puny trees lined up along those very streets... birch trees and others. Walk down the Avenue des Gobelins, then further down Port Royal, all the way to my old high school... Chatelet, le Louvre... But most of what I want to see would be boring to a mere tourist, of course. I wouldn't care to see the monuments, and the only reason I would want to see the Arc of Triumph down the Champs Elysees is because when I was 14 I used to leave school early just to wander about in the early spring right there... right there. I want... to relive the feeling. And remember. Just... remember.
Since I now feel so much like I've had two very distinct lives, I need to face the old to embrace the new. No choice. I just need to.
After that, I don't know.
Again I feel compelled to respond and add some of my thoughts. Having not really grown up in one town but in several I'm not too sure how it feels to return to one place and see it from an adult perspective, especially when all your memories will be from when you were a child. Having said that though, I have returned to places where I grew up after prolonged absences and walked streets that were familiar.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure what I was expecting when I made those trips, whether I was looking for some explanation or understanding as to my life now or whether it was maybe some sort of returning to familiar things and feelings as a form of comfort, a way of trying to bring oneself back to ground. It is possibly just as you said a desire to remember, to recall a life that is so very different to the one you now lead and maybe it's that act of comparing the two it allows you to put the then and now into context.
One thing I do know is it didn't really help me very much but I still return.
Thank you for your input. I think maybe the fact that I grew up in one city plays a part in my desire to go back for a day. But another thing that fed that need to return and remember was mostly a way for me to turn a new leaf. I left pretty abruptly, almost overnight. The feeling inside that remained could almost be compared to a plaster being ripped out so suddenly that you're stunned by it. It's hard to explain.
ReplyDeleteAnd then time passed, and childhood memories started to turn hazier and hazier... It felt too much like I'd had 2 very distinct lives so far, and returning even for a short while was also a way to try and reconcile these 2 phases of my life that have nothing in common anymore, or so little.
I'm glad I went back, I don't know if I achieved what I was looking for, but maybe now I can start looking back at my past in a more positive way as mere childhood memories rather than feeling pangs of regrets or like it represents a lost part of my life. I don't know if that makes sense, perhaps what I feel is mostly linked to the way things happened to me. I can't really say.