Entry #4 or The Holden Caulfield Experience

I've lived in the same city for the past 27 years. At 23, I met it again. And then again at 26.

If you are like me, you exhaustively memorize the faces of the people who cross the roads of your street every day. You know who will be at the metro station at any given time. You remember who drinks their morning coffee at the corner kiosk at 10 am every day. Graffiti tag artists are local celebrities for you. You notice the new outdoor ad decorating the side of the road every time it changes. You remember all the holes in the pavement. You ultimately feel stuck in the routine your city lives out every day. And if you are like me, I've got the solution for you.

Get an international boyfriend. That's what I did.

In the beginning, it's amazing. You meet. He loves that you're local. You tease him for being a tourist, for choosing the rattiest places to hang out, and for being utterly enchanted with the sunset spot you have been going to since you were 14 and emotional.

Then you start going to places you haven't been to before. You sit in corners you've never sat in before. You drink coffee at places you've never even considered entering. You watch football games at sports bars where the menus are all in English. You go to parties at spots you and your friends always called tourist spots. But they are actually nice. And fun.

You've never been a huge fan of ramen, but now you go to a sketchy place every Tuesday night near your boyfriend's house. The avenue you always drove through to get somewhere else, now becomes your late-night beer-drinking spot. The metro station you've never gotten off at becomes your usual one, because he lives on that street.

The view from his window revealed a new profile of your city. Sunnier, greener, happier. You can see the river now. You can almost see the sunset over the water. At 23, I met a boy and I met my city again.

Even the bad things were good. Cigarettes tasted fine now. The smell of alcohol on the floor of the alleyway smelled fine now. The crustiness you felt at 6 am leaving the club, slumping into the metro home, walking up the stairs quietly, and into bed with oily hair, felt romantic now.

I had been walking around, wandering around, skipping around, crying around, smiling around this city for 23 years, and he made it seem like a whole new place. We had shared custody of certain streets and full ownership of other ones. It was like an unspoken rule. We had new spots together and new spots separately. Like we had signed a prenup in case anything happened between us.

And I'm glad for that prenup because it did.

After, it felt unbearable to live in my city. I had not moved, yet I felt like I was back somewhere I promised never to go back to. Those graffiti tag artists came back. The corner kiosk. The people crossing the road. The holes in the pavement.

I wanted my new city back. The ramen. The sports bars. The cigarettes. But it was off-limits. I avoided his metro station, his street, his view of the river. I avoided his impact, his presence, and his influence on the city we shaped anew.

I had to leave. I had to distance myself. To miss my city. To need it again. Because then, these feelings would be stronger than the ones that reminded me of the city we discovered together.

It is very hard to explain how somewhere that had always been yours became someone else's.

I left. I left for about 6 months. After 6 months, I came back secretly. And that's when I had my Holden Caulfield experience.

Have you ever read The Catcher in the Rye? It's my favourite book. I highly dislike Holden, but I understand him deeply. We shared a moment when I was 14 (and emotional) and read about him for the first time. And again at 26, when I lived his 3 days in New York. But not in New York, in my city. And for a month instead.

I had been away, travelling, being that trippy hippie I told you about not so long ago. I left the winter before, and now June was closing in. And I was curious to see my city again. To see how I'd feel. To see if I was over it.

I came back. I rented a room in the city centre. Like right in the middle. Literally. Equal distance from the centre to the edges of the city in all directions. Best place to be if I was in fact a mere visitor. I smelled the river, I held the castle on my left shoulder, the basilica on my right, and had the sun on me 24/7. I was at the top, in the middle of it all.

So I stepped outside of this room, and for a month I wandered through all those same places again. The ones before and after him. I met new people, I encountered old friends. Eventually, I saw my family too. I went to the ramen place, to the sports bars, to the corner kiosk, to all the metro stations. But I never saw him.

He wasn't there. Neither physically or living in the walls of all the buildings of all the streets that made up this city. Like he used to be before I had left. The city did not feel like the one we had built together anymore.

In fact, it felt like I'd never been there before. The city I knew before him wasn't there either.

For a month, I roamed aimlessly, and like Holden, I just found myself grabbing onto things that didn't make sense in my life anymore. I searched for him and for the before him in the same corners, crossroads, and stations. I replicated our routines and my own. I went back to my old spots. To my 14 years old sunset spot. And even if it had only been mine before, I would always end up feeling out of place. I was grabbing onto visions of a place that only existed when I was 5 or 14 or 23. But I am no longer those ages; I am no longer the same person.

I'm no longer even 26. I have a new experience of this city as I experience myself for the first time too, again. Every day, in fact.

I'm not telling you this as a warning not to attach yourself to the places you exist in. I encourage you to do so. But I also urge you to let them go when the time comes. And do not fear what new versions of these places will be created for the new versions of you.

The Holden Caulfield experience is about a lot of things, but this one was mine.