another time, another place

“It’s funny,” she said, “because it’s your old life and your new life colliding.”

I met with a friend recently who I haven’t seen in years. It was one of those friendships born of shared laughter and complicated feelings, one in which I was wholly in the wrong 99% of the time and he felt the weight of it 100% of the time.

Things were messy, in that early twenties way where your whole life is always on the brink of collapse.

It surprised me how easily we fell into it again. I’m always worried about meeting with old friends because there’s a risk of breaking the old in favor of resurrecting the new. Often, I’d rather preserve the person just as they are in my memory. Flawed and scarred, but safely tucked away and accessed whenever I need reminding of who I used to be.

But I can never leave well enough alone.

I needed to know if he, like me, compartmentalized the lives he’d lived. If every version of himself felt like a different person. It’s how I’ve always looked back at my own life: the punk rock era, the music journalist era, the California era, the Toronto era, and so on. It sounds insane to say, but each one feels like a different person. Like I could pluck each from my soul and they could go on living in that version of their life forever and ever while my current one carries on.

This is why I’ve never felt like my life existed in harmony with itself. Each of those periods is like a little time capsule for the person I wanted to be and the path I was on. Often, this was reflected in the people and places I surrounded myself with.

I was nothing without them.

I am nothing without them.

I’m reminded of this in the stacks of photos we go through each week at my grandmother’s, and the stories that accompany them. The things she remembers — the routes she took to and from her Catholic school, the way she played tricks on the nuns, the rules she took playful pleasure in breaking, the address of every house she’s ever lived in, on and on these seemingly random moments go, tucked away and relived over 60 years later.

But they mattered.

For whatever reason, among all the collections her brain has housed, these are the things that remain. I have to imagine it’s because of what these moments said about her. How they made her feel. The people and places she gave her life to.

I’m happy with where I’ve ended up and the places I’m still trying to go, but I can’t help but consult these memories whenever I’m feeling a little sentimental. It’s not that I wish things had turned out differently. I just wonder what would have happened if those lives had been given the chance to breathe.

In this strange fantasy, my memories dance in their own little universe. In them, there’s a version of me living out a completely different existence, each and every time. I get to be all of these things to everyone. If only in fiction.

Do you ever feel like this? Is this a symptom of being creative (something I’ve never thought I was)? Are these sentimental bits and pieces just endless fodder for our writing, our music, our painting or whatever we pursue? Is it inspiration, or am I just weird?

Would love your thoughts. <3

(even if I’m actually just weird)

Recommended listening:

(is there not a more perfect song title for a post like this?)