A Place in Time
More often, I find myself writing before I go to bed. Usually after I’ve been sitting at my desk for hours mindlessly surfing through every page I click on. Applying to jobs and pitching articles I’ve written. Anxiously and constantly refreshing my email, hoping to see an acceptance for either. A warm drink is regularly by my side during this time.
The bitter winter has caused me to focus on thinking less and trying to keep warm. I write this with dry lips and cracked knuckles.
I turn 24 today. Can’t say I’m all that excited about my birthday, I never liked the reminder of getting older. Remembering how every second happens once, then stays suspended in memory. I don’t want to acknowledge the loss of childhood wonder. And I’d rather not remember that my childhood will only exist through images that, in Proustian fashion, explode when biting into an apple, or when the smell of meghli (a Levantine dessert) fills the house.
It’s always a bittersweet time of year. I don’t think anyone truly enjoys their birthday, when the get-togethers are done, and they lay in bed at night staring at the ceiling thinking, all this time has passed, and so little of it is left.
When sitting down to think about it, birthdays are more a time of troubling melancholy than joy. The person’s special day is spent with friends and family to escape the fact that they’re aging, that all the moments they’ve shared throughout their past isn’t real anymore.
I think what’s even more nauseating than knowing that I’m aging, is that the people I love are growing old as well. Some may not make it to next year, as others haven’t this year or the year prior, etc.
It’s a time of contemplation. Late nights, the clock entering the first hour of the day, heavy eyes trying to put you to bed. But you’d rather stay up remembering life in snapshots; what you might’ve done wrong, the things you’ve excelled at, failures and victories, the warmth you felt when you were with someone you loved.
I’ve been reflecting on my time in history. I wasn’t alive to know life pre internet, and was too young to really witness its takeover of society. NATO started a two-week-long bombing campaign of Yugoslavia, and now I can see the region still hasn’t fully recovered. Many of my favourite authors died decades before my birth, but I enjoy their work now decades after they’ve passed. I wasn’t alive to witness my country plunged into civil war for 15 years, but was alive to watch the 2006 July war live on TV.
It’s interesting how that works. The morning routines of writers, drunk co-workers in a California post office, philosophizing at Parisian cafés, I can experience a life lived before my life began. The best history is learned through the written memories of others
All this to say that memories of life grow larger, bolder, more overwhelming. A life that no one but you will know on a level deeper than anyone can imagine. You can get lost in memories, realizing that every moment turns to memory before it can be fully taken in. Or use it to fuel creative interests, desires, a new path for the future.
I have my goals for this 24th year of my life. I’d like to read more, be more brave when pitching essays and not let the anxiety of rejection stop me, I’d like to bake more, etc. The main goal for this year, as it was for years prior and will be for future years, is to collect as many heartwarming memories as possible.
Written Feb. 8, 2023
Follow me on Twitter @doomedimage
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