Nostalgia tours
Last month I visited Uruguay for the second time since I moved out. The first time I visited I took my German boyfriend, who also wanted to trade a winter month for a summer one, and spent most of the time introducing him to everyone and showing him around in what I sometimes call a nostalgia tour.
I am proficient at nostalgia touring. Doing it with someone else is always a bit disappointing, because, although they can, if you're good at talking about it, understand what you feel about things, most of the time they can't also feel it. Doing it alone is something else entirely, and depending on some tenuous circumstances it can be (kind of) pleasant or full on masochism.
This time I went to Uruguay alone, and it was full on masochism. If you've lived in the same city for 28 years there's a lot in it to trigger memories. And I walked around the city triggering the memories, and then standing still for a few minutes until they made me cry, and then moving on to the next spot in the itinerary. I do this compulsively.
Before I left Uruguay I was infinitely depressed, drinking too much, feeling myself rot. One God-sent manic episode later I had spent my meager savings on a plane ticket and deposit + first month rent of an unbeknownst to me way too expensive apartment in Berlin, and then I left. There was absolutely no guarantee that this was a good idea, but I was desperate. It worked. What's even more incredible: it worked immediately. I stopped drinking, got a job, met my boyfriend, got a lot healthier, got my shit together. Surprising turn of events.
So last month, alone in Montevideo, walking around to stare at places where I had one time been sad and remember exactly why I was sad on that moment and attempt to recreate that particular sadness in my mind, I realized: I cannot do that in Berlin. I cannot do that anywhere else, really. Everywhere else in the world street corners are just street corners where nothing sad or meaningful ever happened to me, so I don't have to add them to my compulsive tour. I am free.
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