Thinking back on the time I spent in Paris now feels exactly the same as any other memories I've had in my life. I couldn't remember how I felt back then if I didn't try hard enough. Generally speaking, everything just feels nostalgic yet trivial to me regardless of it being a good memory or bad, and we become comfortable with talking about it as if it's harmless now.
A month before heading to Paris, I, a fanatic, showed him a photo of this bookstore that I really wanted to visit, "Do you know where this is?" "Merci," he said, "that's one of my favorite places and I was planning to bring you there. Where did you find this photo?"
So a month later I was there. Now I already forgot how I felt at that time but I was probably having an adrenaline rush, like when you visit a place you've seen in your favorite movie. But apart from the excitement for the place itself I guess it was also the influence of too much caffeine and nicotine - he made me coffee every morning in my favorite glass that had flamingo prints on it and had our morning cigarettes in the balcony with the April breeze spiking through his hoodie (which I gave him on his birthday) that I was wearing and the strong sunlight blinding my sight that I couldn't see his face.
One time, at MK2 Bibliothèque, after being traumatized from watching Red Sparrow, it was already too late to catch a bus or a taxi. It was so cold that we had to hide from the wind behind doors while waiting for our Uber ride back home. We were both wearing leather jackets that couldn't keep us warm and he held my hand so tightly in his pocket to stop it from shaking. I've forgotten how it feels now but I remember at that moment I realized I loved him so much. We got into an Uber and he was still holding my hand in his pocket while explaining to me that the driver was playing French rap music.
The day before I left Paris, we went to MK2 Bibliothèque again. That was our favorite place to hang out. We were having the best burgers at the open area with wooden tiles on the floor. A piece of wood got stuck in my right palm and it started to swell up really badly. He was so worried and he tried to look for the closest clinic to get that piece of wood out and to clean my wound. But it was very late when it happened and all the shops were closed. We walked for 20 minutes and there were still no clinics or pharmacies. He called his mother at one point and she told him we could take the metro and go to this pharmacy that opened till late at night. We took different transportations and it took us 45 minutes to get there. He was checking my wound every minute during the trip. And when we arrived and finally got rid of the wood in my hand, we walked around that area filled with night life. People were dancing Two-Step in the street with their partners. When we finally got home after midnight, his parents, who usually went to bed early, were still waiting in the living room for us so they could properly say goodbye to me, and I think at that time it warmed my heart.
I guess being human just means that you feel everything and then nothing and everything again. This implies that now I might think of all memories as a hollow shell, and yet on the day when I die, all of them would come back again in waves and we would experience and feel everything again right before we close our eyes.
We all go through that transition period when reality slowly becomes memories. Some people take longer to adapt and some experience it faster than when it actually happens. I remember about two weeks before we decided to go our separate ways, he said he felt that something had died, but he didn't know what it was. In hindsight now I finally understand that he had already gone through the transition period while I still felt like I was living in that reality believing that he was still the same person who went to the airport 3 hours early to pick me up because he was scared that I would get lost. His voice still calmed me and whenever I closed my eyes, his face still appeared crystalized. This lasted about 2 months until I realized it's really over.
Even though I don't feel anything right now while documenting these scenes flashing across my mind, I can never forget that it felt overwhelming at that time when they happened. Were we happy? We must've been. If all love starts with a spark then what we had must've been a forest fire. But feelings have wilted and meanings are lost. The only thing I should be grateful for is that he gave me such beautiful memories. In fact that should be the case for other memories with other people as well. I'm very certain that I will never feel anything like that again, but that shouldn't be an upsetting fact. And whenever we feel that nostalgia is consuming us, it only means that we are moving forward. A few days ago I realized I was already done with that transition phase. There's only gratitude whenever I think about him, and now, finally, I learn to see the good in goodbyes.
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Thanks for the memories
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