written by Maria Pileidou
I have lived in only one city my whole life. I have travelled to many, but my home has been only in one. The only time I moved houses, when I was ten, we moved 300 meters away from our old home. So, you could say nothing had really changed. I wouldn’t say that, for me everything changes.
I have lived in this city my whole life, yet every time I cross its streets, I don’t feel the same as the last time. Every time I go for a walk, I notice new trees in the park and houses in my neighborhood I have never seen before – but they have been here for a longer time than I have. I have walked these streets countless times, with countless different feelings written on my face. Other times laughing with friends and others crying alone. They are still the same streets, with the same name and the same corners.
I won’t say the streets hold memories; I do. Whenever I step on the same broken pavement stone twice, my mind, like a movie player, relives the moments of the past I spent in that spot. People of the past come to the present and get blended with the people of the now. And feelings I had back then get in the way of the unique feel of my heart in the present.
Having lived in one city my whole life and having a good memory, I remember the Sunday walks my mum used to take meme as a toddler in the city. We travelled by bus from our little suburb, the one where I still live, to the city center and we went to the theatre. We always travelled with the bus number 27. I still travel with this bus from time to time. Now I commute alone, I don’t have anyone to talk to or ask “Are we there yet”, I just wait for my stop. Sometimes I have music on my headphones, other times a book in my hands and others I just look around, people watching on the bus, trying to create new memories on those old buses and streets.
And whenever I hop on the bus no. 27 I always go back for a moment to the old buses with the wooden chairs and to the sunny Sundays on the way home from our walk. The seats of the bus are now in colorful fabric and the old paper tickets have been replaced by plastic cards. Now when I am on my way home, there is no sun, only a dark sky. Only sometimes, when I see the moon from the foggy window, that little smile, I had back then, comes back.
Last week I turned 20 and I still live-love (in) this city. I wouldn’t change her for any other city in the world. Together with her I created all the different versions of myself, which I struggle to fit into the single body the rest of the world gave me. But, in between the creations, throughout all these years, something changed. The bus I travelled with hasn’t, neither the streets I walk, and not the people of the city I love. And I don’t feel that I have changed at all, nor my inability to process change; I still get a bittersweet feeling on the way home.
I am still here, stuck in a battle between urban memories of the past and original thoughts of the moment, unable to choose between the two. Maybe this is the change I much anticipated, the change from living in the moment to creating memories.
