Utrecht, And Change

Never the same river, and not the same man

Image by the author

The sun kissed my cheeks as I stepped out of Utrecht Central. I’m early, and not by accident. My shift starts later in the day.

The strange heat has returned to the Netherlands, after a spell of brief thunderstorms, the likes of which I’ve never seen. I squint, as I’ve forgotten my sunglasses again, and my T-shirt sticks to my back.

My eyes sag. Another early morning, another plastic cone of cheap iced coffee from Albert Heijn. Is it wrong that I like them so much?

The square is familiar, like a picture you tried to remember, but all it amounted to was shapes and blurs. But the sound of Dutch, the familiarity of a busy shopping centre, they remained.

With time to spare, I wander down the Oudegracht, past stores and restaurants I once shopped and sat in. This was where I left home for, the place I decided would pull me out of Dublin.

As I walk through Neude, I crane my neck to the right. The Dom Tower stands proudly over the cozy city. The library is to my left, and I recall the days I spent there writing arguably one of my worst drafts, about a demon panda traipsing around Dublin fighting evil. I shudder at the draft.

But I wrote then, as I left home for a real adventure, especially as the city had come to feel so cramped post-Covid. Usually, when I return to Rathmines, I find myself assimilating to where I’m from: driving on the left, beautiful Dunnes Stores, but also expecting to adjust like I never left.

Except this time, I found myself expecting Dutch accents to fall out of their mouths, but instead, a blend of every part of my home city followed.

I remember catching myself when it happened, on more than one occasion. Looking the wrong way when I crossed, the usual. Something had changed, and it was Utrecht that started this, for better or for worse.

I walk the streets, and though I remember the bones, the connective tissue isn’t there. Just like the shopping square, I remember the outlines, but not the details. Shops had changed, and others I thought I recalled were in different places. Even the apartment feels alien, but so does something else.

Me.

I wander by the pub, with my destination in sight and probably the clearest example. Once, where I went to buy my Monster, a place I hadn’t been to in four years, now represented something else: a job. I’m always killing myself for not being where I want to be, but this journey was one of someone changed.

From customer to employee, years later. Not exactly where I expected to be. But why be glum? Right by the place, I once floated down the canal in an inflatable boat, drinking beers in the sun.

Four years is a long time, and though things tend to move in a certain direction as your life goes on, you expect yourself to be the same. But that’s not the case, not for me. I felt hardened, having lost an innocence I expected to carry forever.

I struggled to envisage that guy, who was me, who looks like me but doesn’t feel like me anymore. I don’t know what I am now, or who I’m growing into, but places are slowly teaching me that they may be the same, more or less but I’m not going to be.

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