I have stopped treating time as time.

I came back to Montreal last night, on another agonizingly long bus ride. I read and slept for the most of the way, but as soon as we got close enough to the city for me to recognize the highway exit, I turned off the reading light and just sat there, enjoying my return to a city that means to much to me.

It’s a strange mix of fear and love each time I come back, because Montreal holds so much history for me, somewhat painful at times. I think of Big D, I think of my insane parents, I think of the hardships of college applications and clandestine rendez-vous. Because the me coming back from New York, from Beijing, from France is never the same person as the me who left Montreal not so long ago. And it’s scary to try and figure out how this new person fits in with the old life I left behind.

I come back this semester as an insane student who took 10 classes without telling her parents, as the girlfriend of a bboy from Philly, as the ex of Big D, as the new NSOP coordinator for Columbia… I’m not sure who I was when I last left, but it was definitely someone in a different mindset.