Valencia

Some of my earliest memories abroad are from Valencia. It was the first time I lived in a city, the first time I found myself in an environment in which I could barely communicate with others, and the first time I didn’t enjoy the summer in spite of an opportunity that, a few years later, could have been a lot of fun. It was from the time before.

From coloring books and Crash Bandicoot to conversations about relationships and a solitary swim on a cloudy afternoon, the nearly two-decade divide has brought me closer to myself. Some things remain the same, such as my love of sepia and regularly being mistaken for someone much younger, but other things, such as my general regard for humanity and idealistic youth, have gone the way of the past. I am neither hopeful nor hopeless, though I can no longer take comfort in that the adults, with everyone’s best interest at heart, will save us from ourselves.

Some of the people from these early memories abroad now only exist in our abilities to hold them in our minds, and I often find myself thinking of them, though I can’t be sure why. A memory of a woman standing in a kitchen the day we took a bus up to Paris to see the final match of the Champion’s League, recollections of a father’s affect and the effect it had on both his presence and those of the people around him, the sight of a grandmother’s smile. And some of the people are still there, and our memories overlap before they diverge again. We will always stray from each other.

But we are able to stray from each other because we come together, and if we keep coming together for the right reasons, maybe future generations will also have the opportunity to experience the world, to form memories, and to discover what it is like to be human.

Most people may not have everyone’s best interest at heart, but some people do, and that is enough to hope.