Rolling countrysides came into view from the forefront of my dash as I adjusted my aviators. I didn’t know where I was driving, but I knew what I was looking for.
As I turned the corner, the arch of the bridge loomed ahead of me. I rolled my windows down, letting July’s wicked humidity flood through my open window, while One Republic’s Good Life filled the body of my Camry. The upbeat throwback reminded me of when I was 16.
It didn’t matter that it was 90 degrees and I was sweating through my overalls. The fresh air filled my lungs with the kind of energy I hadn’t known in weeks. Veering onto a parkway, I thought about how things had changed over the last year.
I had lost some of my best friends––that was hard. Still, I made some lifelong memories along the way.
Reaching my destination, I parked, then started walking to the bridge. I thought back to when I had last been here. It was a little over a year ago. Things had changed. I wasn’t the same dreamy, blue-eyed nineteen-year-old. I had gained some wisdom and a few white hairs in my tousled mane since that time.
I gripped the cold rail of the bridge and looked down at the houses hidden in the hills bellow. I felt like Mia from La La Land looking over Los Angeles from the park bench. The city looked different in the day than the night. Los Angeles hadn’t changed, but Mia had. And so had I.
I hummed “Mia and Sebastian’s Theme” to myself. I liked to think Mia was just like me. Her dreams were as big as her heart, and she loved people with an unguarded, childlike affection. When she failed, she kept going until she finished what she started. By the end of the movie, when she had achieved what she had set out to do, she returned to the place her dreams began. When Mia stepped into Seb’s Jazz club in the final scene of the movie, images of her alternative life with Sebastian flashed before her. She thought of what could have been.
I always did that. I always looked to the past. When I did, I remembered who I was.
I leaned over the bridge closing my eyes. I thought back to past memories like they were yesterday.
It was the summer of 2014. Chilly Virginia air filled my lungs as I hugged my friends, gathered my belongings and waved goodbye to Patrick Henry College. I pulled out of the exit, watching the colonial pillars of the main building fade into the distance, thinking I would one day call it my own. Taylor Swift’s “Everything Has Changed” flowed freely through the Explorer’s speaker. At sixteen, I felt like I could do anything. Life was easy, friends were made quickly and mistakes were forgiven. The song freed me. It reminded me that the world was limitless and made me think that love was easy. When I think back on those summer memories, sometimes I wish I could go back. It was time I took for granted.
Now, the same song that once made me giddy reminds me of my age.
On a frigid April night of 2018, I stood on a boardwalk on Lake Michigan under a cascade of snow flurries. Bundled beneath an oversized leather jacket and gloves that weren’t nearly warm enough, I pulled the layers tighter to my body. “Glory” by Dermot Kennedy still rang in my head from the speaker in his car. I gazed over him, then to the lapping waters that swallowed the dock and the darkness before us. The moon peeked over the navy horizon, while the waves of the sea met the sky.
“It looks like the fringe of heaven,” I whispered against his shoulder. “You can barely see where the sea ends and the sky begins.”
Our conversation was raw. I didn’t hold back the deep thoughts I often did from others. I spoke my mind, revealing my hopes and fears. I said some things I never dared to say. And so did he.
The howling wind severed the silence as the wind picked up its pace. Snowflakes blurred my vision. I felt safe and content. Nothing needed to be said as we stood closely shielding the wind. It was perfect. It was one of those rare moments where I didn’t have to think about how to make a moment. I just lived it.
It was June of 2018. Walking through Belmont’s gardens brought back silhouettes of the friends I once sang with on its grounds. Laying my head down under the gazebo, I glanced around the bell tower and spotted the music building I once snuck into with friends. Curious, I went over and pulled the handle, then walked down the carpeted stairwell. Nothing had changed. I found myself in the room I once brought to life. Its scent of old books and mildew overpowered my perfume. The instant my fingers knew the keys, the golden pitch of the song filled the body of the room. I tried my luck at Harry Connick Jr’s “Do You Really Need Her.” For a while I played, losing myself in the harmony. Connick’s song was rich. When I was weak, Connick’s line “I’m not strong enough but I’ll go on, I must go on” were the words that kept me going. His honest emotion bled through the song and into my own life.
I opened my eyes, jarred back to reality by a car horn passing in the distance. I wasn’t at Belmont anymore. My hands were still gripping the iron rail on a 145-foot bridge.
I began to walk along the bridge in silence, thinking. It wasn’t unusual for me to daydream. Too often I lived in my past; I found it more productive than worrying about the future. By mere thought, I could go back in time to a place and learn from my mistakes or cherish a memory that I couldn’t enjoy long enough. There was no limit to what my mind could vividly paint from the past. Life could be re-lived within the window of my imagination. The freedom was both gloriously dangerous and exhilarating.
There was a comfort in what was known. I always knew how a story ended. That was the beauty of nostalgia.
I traced my right hand gently across the names etched into the rail, humming “Castle Street” by Lewis Watson. The sentimental messages reminded me of the lovers locks on the Pont des Arts bridge in Paris. I was never one for vandalism, but I was a die hard romantic and the thought of writing something sappy on the rail was tempting.
This bridge was special to me. The first time I had come here, I was enamored with the view and dreamed it would be the place I would say “yes” to the love of my life. Today was not that day. But I wanted to leave something behind.
I pulled out my key, then knelt down and carefully etched a phrase into the iron. I turned and walked slowly away, leaving the message to be discovered by someone years down the road.