the past inside the present

This week I went to check out my housemate’s new place (unfortunately, he is soon to be an ex-housemate). Three of us drove out to the apartment in the cold and wet. We carried in some boxes and took a grand tour of the place; blue carpeted, slightly aged, but full of promise. I don’t know why but I was inclined to open every single cupboard door and drawer, and I indulged that whim. The apartment had cute little tweaks to it here and there, like the coat closet right by the door. Which we made a point of using.
I imagine it will be homely.
We wandered down the street, scoping out the neighbourhood, and got some takeaway Thai food. We ate dinner sitting on pillows on the floor, drinking Fanta out of coffee cups. It was a sweet little housewarming.

When we were in the hallway of the building I was hit with a familiar smell that took me back to the residence that I lived in years ago now in Lyon. Amazing, how a smell can take you back to somewhere you’ve been before in an instant. To be honest it wasn’t the most pleasant smell; a warm and lingering concoction of cigarette smoke and a salty, savoury scent coming from all types of dinners. Of a multitude of existences gathered in the same building, of life’s movements. For a second I was so transported by this scent that I wanted to run up the stairs to see one of my good friends, as if she’d be there on the fourth floor, as if I was back at the res. Nostalgia set in, and a type of homesickness, for a time that I’ll never live again. In the midst of celebrating my housemate’s new beginning I was taken back to the past.

We live as though the day something has to end is never going to come, hyper aware that dwelling on that ending will effect the present too much. It’s been like that lately for my housemates and me; with only days before farewelling each other we’re still trying to push it away and ignore it.
When I moved house at the start of this year, though, I realised that an ending is not necessarily so abrupt or final as you might believe. We carry memories and ideas and experiences with us, all the time. The same as we have extraneous amounts of belongings; we transport all of these things, in how we are and who we become, in how we behave. We are continuously augmented by experience. While farewells are difficult, those people or situations we leave certainly make an impression on us, enhancing the way we live our lives.

And sometimes, when you’re least expecting it, you’ll run headlong into the past. But hopefully when it happens, you can smile at the memory.