passing

i've been back in the netherlands for a few weeks now. i didn't grow up here exactly. i arrived at fourteen, passport in hand, into a language i barely spoke and a culture i didn't recognize. what followed was difficult in ways i won't detail here. i survived it, worked through most of it, and eventually left.

coming back still carries weight. not because things are unresolved, but because the reminders are still here. they don't add anything new. they buzz around like a mosquito you can't find, and the instinct is still to swat.

the studio is gone. the structure is gone. i'm waiting for a date, a confirmation, a next step. in the meantime i organise, research, attend family gatherings, and feel the distance between where i am and where i'm going.

this time i decided to use the waiting deliberately. i revisited the places that still had a hold on me. the chalet where i once lived was run down, the area barely recognisable. i stood there and felt mainly the passing of time. nothing more.

i visited a grave. a friend who took her own life, years ago. in my head the image had stayed fixed: the casket, that day, the rawness of it. but standing there i felt something shift. the grave itself carried no weight. she was never there. she has always been in the memory, which is intact, and which belongs to me regardless of where i am.

what both visits gave me was the same thing. the past doesn't hold its shape. it changes, decays, becomes something else. only inside the head does it stay frozen. i've been revisiting things that no longer exist as i remember them, and calling that unfinished business.

i'm tired of the past creeping in. i want to go with what's coming.