Munich and Lisbon
22nd August 2024
22nd August 2024
I check the screens after security and from somewhere the idea arrives to see if there are any flights to Munich. I scroll down the list and there is one. I smile seeing the word Munich. And then right below it there is my flight to Lisbon. Because of a small delay they are leaving at the exact same time. Both the gates will be shown at 19.50 apparently. Now I laugh. The idea turns into the thought that maybe he is in fact here at the airport. Flying home to Munich at the exact same time I am flying home to Lisbon. Lisbon and Munich. Next to each other on the boards. The places we have landed in somehow someway. Munich and Lisbon. I smile because it really is a funny twist. We spent so long talking about where we could live that wasn’t London. He wanted Bristol mostly. I didn’t know. We played with ideas and options and he got frustrated with my decision making slowness and I got hurt with his decision making quickness. And now somehow we have found two places, both in Europe, equally far away from London but just in different directions. We both live in Europe. Separately but together in that I guess. A funny twist in our story.
I go to Pret because I love Pret and I miss it when I am in Portugal. I have my favourites. The chicken salad with the pistachios and a bag of cheese and onion crisps today. I imagine what it would be like to bump into him. A part of me really thinks I might. A part of me would like to. I wait until both of the gates are called and they are just four gates apart. Munich is on the way to Lisbon so I walk passed it and have a little pause there. Of course he isn’t there, that would be really wild but I check even so. Even 20 minutes later before I am about to board I think about checking again. I don’t know why I want to see him really. No doubt it would be friendly and probably brief and a bit strange. No doubt it would be lovely and it would be hard in equal measure. We were so very close and now we are so very far. Quite literally. We inhabit new countries and homes and relationships and even languages sometimes. But I do know that both of our new partners are European people and it’s just so funny how it’s worked out. That on some level we might be able to relate to each other over this. Even now, even though we have gone so far. I have the fanciful notion still of friendship and to do that we would need to sit next to one another again I think. To reestablish a new way of being and new memories that aren’t so hot and fuelled.
He was my first real love. I can see that now. The first and one of the best I will ever know. It’s why it was so hard to let it go. I have no shame in saying that, I was not built to let things go easily. And this wasn’t something easy. This was growing up together and holidays and big trips and first flats and big fights and cosy mornings and plans for the future and memories and memories. I have learnt there is a purity about your first big relationship that you will never get back whatever happens next. But you get to keep if you end up with that person for the long time. Sometimes I long for that purity but I also know I have traded it in for real life wisdoms that sound like poorly written tarot cards. E.g;
not everything lasts
life will keep on living
you can’t control everything
life will favour the brave
life happens outside of your comfort zone
you will meet someone else
you will fall in love again
new love will rush in
They don’t feel basic when they are embodied though.
I wonder what Munich is like, Ive never been. I can imagine you there I think though. I try to always imagine you happy. I don’t go back to the gate again because my gate is ready and I am flying to Lisbon. Where in the last year and a bit I have a built a mini life and a mini home. I need to be proud of this. I am proud of this. And I know now what it takes so in that way I am proud of you too. It would be nice to fly together for a couple of hours and find out how things have been. The shape of you is still just in the edges of my memory and it is so strange in breakups that the familiar becomes distant. Obvious but strange. Like a dream. Like a parallel life. Gate 11 and gate 15. Close by but filled with people flying in different directions.
