The Memories of Reshuffling My Life’s Broken Pieces in a Beautiful City
Once upon a time, Groningen was the backdrop of a dream. A world filled with wonders and possibilities sneaking behind every low-quality pixel of a device 10,000 kilometres away.
Then, as the colours sharpened, as pixels turned into organic, live, tangible images, the backdrop became a world so vivid and beautiful — but the dream began to crack.
I spent days, seasons, and years looking away from the cracks, naively clutching this brittle realm as tightly as I could — until my grip could no longer hold the inevitable rupture.
The dream world burst into shards, with the sharp edges coming at me, tearing every inch of everything I had. They persisted until the last drop of hope — until I was no longer broken — because there was nothing left — not a single piece to constitute brokenness — only some hints of ash, traces of dust, some microscopic atoms of my life, none of which visible to the naked eye.
When I buried my face in the pillow and screamed for hours but no one was around, did I make a sound?
But my story didn’t end in the abyss.
No credits were rolled after the last character was disintegrated into an irreparable state. It was not a nuclear meltdown story of Owen Harper in Torchwood, but a regeneration episode of an uneventful timelord…
All because broken dream aside, Groningen is nothing less than a fortress of beautiful creatures.
It’s filled with people who can forge dust and turn ashes back into even more vibrant pieces. Pieces from kindness, friendships, dances, hugs*, safe spaces to whine and sometimes scream, an accompanied room to cry and to laugh, to soothe the pain, to forget. Pieces that are gifts from friends, classmates, colleagues, and strangers. Pieces that allowed me to patch together a life and become a different kind of whole.
Now, I was midway through an 8-hour trip to Hamburg when the bus began navigating curve after curve, forcing me to look away from the steamy chapters of my e-book to contain my nausea. Outside the bus window were views of nostalgia; the city archive building, the abstract installation on Emmabrug, and then the Most Beautiful Train Station in the Netherlands 2019.
A sudden bittersweet flow of strangely familiar matter wrapped around me, tightening the muscles around my chest. From this vantage point, the sight of some distant buildings marked the places that were fragments of my former world. The walking paths and neighbourhoods where I once (or a thousand times) mindlessly wandered round and round, with thoughts locked in distress and heart drowning in excruciating pain.
Today, it’s surreal how Groningen is merely a stop on my way to my destination. The city that was once my home is now only home to some vivid memories. Memories of new beginnings and end chapters. Of ‘Hellos’ and ‘I’ll see you again’. Of drunken nights and awkward encounters. Of trying hard, surviving, and on some rare occasions, thriving. Of seasons when I felt hollow, and days filled with hope.
The bus started moving. The Groninger Museum (its iconic architecture and equally iconic function room filled with lamps that are shaped like boobies) disappeared from my peripherals.
In a few hours, I’ll be with a friend. In a few days, I’ll come home to my partner. Soon, I’ll get off the Most Beautiful Train Station in the Netherlands 2019 once again to visit some wonderful bunch. Yes, those beautiful creatures, all of the integral pieces of my life I’ve bumped into here in this mystical fortress in the north, remain part of me, hopefully ever after.
