Portrait

…as I walk down the grand, wooden staircase, the banister gleaming, my footsteps echoing, in my mind’s eye, I can see myself, walking down these very same steps, years ago. There used to be a time, when I was never far from this place. Sitting with the girls at the bar, laughing with the boys down below, on the sprawling green lawn.

All the names, written in white block letters, names of captains, names of presidents, names of friends, mingle with the very air of the place. This was a time before. I was young, and foolish. Not just in the way in which we all say it, but truly young, and truly foolish. The place becomes a time in my life, and not really a place at all.

The structure has remained the same, it should look no different to me than it did then, but it does. It does not contain the same feelings, the same expectations, the same excitement as it once did. Coming here today does not mean the same things that it did then, when coming here meant so many things, all at once, too much to feel, for a girl so young and so very foolish.

I have spent many hours here, desiring, being desired. Sitting cross-legged on the lawn, being affected by some oarsman or the other, knowing very well that I’m having an effect on them too. Pretending not to look, not to care, but inside, tripping up with a woozy kind of joy. When the veil of night comes to cover all our mischievous agendas, hands get held, lips get kissed, hearts get broken and mended again, falling in and out of love. Friends get drunk, earning but never losing respect, carrying each other out, holding onto shoulders and doubling up with laughter.

This place reminds me not only of the things I used to do, but the way I used to be. Do I long for who I was then? Frivolous not in a crass, stupid way alone, but in a carefree way. Today it seems my every move is planned carefully, my heart content, not constantly agonising, searching, yearning. I did dangerous things, not entirely dangerous to myself, but small, selfish things. I did detrimental things. Not things that scarred one for life, but momentous things that lasted just a second in all its powerful glory, until I moved onto the next one.

I did not dare calculate how I affected others, afraid to find that I was truly normal, and solely unremarkable except for the way I made people feel. But I used this as much as I could, as much as I was allowed to, by all the good friends who wearily watched over me, ever ready to cut in, but also eager to let me stumble and learn.

I did things in an unhesitating way. In a forceful, potent kind of way. I never failed. I never missed. I always got what I wanted, who I wanted. And this place has seen a lot of that. What and who I wanted was not always exactly right. It was always what and who I wanted then, right then. And I was young and foolish enough to not look beyond, to be able to work towards that without a care in the world, without having to think ‘What next?’ until it came right to me and tapped me on the shoulder.

It was a wonderful kind of abandon, careless but never reckless. It all seems like a distant dream. A vague memory that doesn’t even seem to really belong to me.

In the end, I still managed to preserve every part of who I am for the right one, the right now. I am still whole. Different, but whole. This place has remained the same over the years. People still come and go, all the people I used to know and some people that I don’t, and some people that I know still, from the bottom of my heart. And it seems I have moved on, in all the good ways, the comfortable ways. It’s nice to revisit, like a relic of my past life, my past self. Nostalgia is good, but it is too connected to the past to be my favourite feeling. If there is one thing my past self and my present self have in common, it is the desire to live in the present.

And so I walk on, the nostalgia fades, to be replaced by all that I am feeling, and all that I am, right now.