Norwegian Church at Cardiff Bay
We were pretty tired and cold. After a couple of years living in Greece, our bodies had adapted to the heat and had forgotten how to handle cold weather. It might not have even been that cold, but the wind from the bay sent chills through us. We immediately decided to go inside and warm up for a while.
Inside, it was toasty. The barista was so friendly and the atmosphere so happy that I was instantly transported back to two trips from my “past life” — one from 11 years ago, and another from the year after. Both trips held dear, pleasant memories, but they were also incredibly sad. If I didn’t know that a human body completely replaces its cells every seven to ten years, I wouldn’t have believed they had even happened to me.
The first trip, to Finland and Sweden, felt like the beginning of something new and exciting, but it was actually the end. It took me almost eight years to cope and reinvent myself from scratch. Though, keeping the seven-year theory in mind, every cell that had suffered was likely gone, and I was, in a sense, a new person. I sat on a wooden bench, drinking a coffee, and thinking about the past. I had only started drinking coffee again a year or so ago, after almost ten years of abstinence. Honestly, I had hated coffee since that trip, but I learned to love it again.
I believe that one was taken in 2014, but it might as well be from the second trip
The second trip was to Åland. I went alone, just to see what it would feel like to experience the same conditions again after a whole year of pain. It was a terrible experience. The trip itself was fine, but I felt awful. I haven’t traveled alone since. Still, I cherish the memories of eating fish soup by the river at an old fisherman’s house and exploring Mariehamn in the evening, watching a sunrise and a sunset from the top of a hill. I remember going to a random pub for supper and watching a guy get kicked out for being drunk and shattering a beer glass. Then, on the steps of a church almost identical to the one I’d seen the year before, where I’d once thought I was having the best day of my life, I felt I was having the worst. I cried for all the things I could have had but had lost, and it felt liberating, even though it wasn’t.
Hills of Mariehamn, 2015
A quote on the wall caught my attention. I usually dislike such things, but this one triggered memories so intensely that I almost cried again. I recalled both trips with a clarity I usually tended to avoid. I experienced all the emotions again. It was so strange to feel the same way after more than ten years, but I was glad that even though I was older, I could still think, feel, and experience things as before. It meant that the young, silly boy inside me hadn’t died or gone into a dark room but was wandering in the fields instead. This was a relief, and I’m glad I had that realization and have held onto it.
You can't go back and change the beginning but you can start where you are and change the ending.
And then we left. The day was long, we had things to see, and it was still only morning. God, I was so tired.