Faded, Silenced, Deleted
No matter how far away I’ve gone—to the crowded streets of New York, the hot coasts of Australia, or beneath the high ceilings of old Berlin apartments—I always come back to my town at year’s end. Back to a place where time seems to stand still. And I feel superior. Because nobody there had the nerve to attempt even a fraction of what I managed.
The streets of my hometown are still the same ones I rode my BMX through as a kid. I know them inside and out. Every corner, every shortcut. I still dream about the days when these alleys ran through my veins. And every meter of them is marked with memories that, at the right moment, come flooding back.
I’m walking down the main street on a sunny winter morning—nobody around—and my mind starts to wander. It floats up above the town, making a map. Of houses. Of paths. Of fields. And suddenly these pins pop up everywhere, memories I can touch that pull me in and replay what makes me who I am.
The time we broke into a caravan when I was twelve and used stolen helium from the carnival to turn our voices into Mickey Mouse. When I was thirteen and we called an ambulance because Maria crashed into the pool fence on her sled and blood streamed down her face. When I was sixteen, sitting on the slide at the local playground with Chrissy while she yanked her white top up and screamed obscenities at the neighbor who tried to beat us with a shovel the day before.
When I snap back to it, I’m standing on a small bridge outside of town. Near some abandoned allotment gardens. The sun’s in my face, my scarf’s getting tighter, and below me a small stream makes its way to the next village. I stare into the cold water and something hits me all at once—a truth that makes my chest heavy and brings tears to my eyes.
We owned this place. We shook it, made it tremble. We were the ones who moved through its streets at night, kissing and eating and fighting and crying and coming and screaming and laughing and drinking. Loud. Fierce. Fearless. We wanted to last forever. We wanted our actions to still cause a stir a hundred years from now. We wanted to be immortal, even though we were already fading.
My graffiti has faded. My legends have gone silent. My marks have been deleted. The generation that runs these streets now has no idea what happened here years ago. What we risked. Who we touched. How many enemies we made and how many friends we had. They don’t care. My name means nothing to them. The places that mattered. My sadness. My songs.
And then I get it: I have no reason to feel superior. Because I didn’t accomplish anything. Because nothing lasts. Not here, not anywhere else. It doesn’t matter how far I go or what I experience. Who I’m with. How often or how intensely I live it. Because one day I’ll turn around. And none of it will be there anymore.
My memories are just vague shadows haunting this town now. They have no power, no pull. But they prove I’ve been replaced. By young people who think I’m irrelevant, writing their own legends in the places that served as the backdrop for my memories. Not the first time, won’t be the last.
But they’ll come back too, one day. They’ll stand on this bridge and they’ll cry and they’ll realize that none of their wild and passionate and dramatic actions lead anywhere. That their youth is a copy of a copy of a copy. That everything falls apart the moment they turn around.
All that’s left is the eternal dream: to do something nobody’s done before. So it pulls me to the crowded streets of New York, the hot coasts of Australia, the high-ceilinged apartments. I don’t think about what came before—I believe in something unique. It’s what keeps me sane. The only way not to lose my mind.
I keep going. I fill the empty legends of my memories with new adventures and images and smells and tastes and sounds. Maybe next year I’ll come back. Back to my town. Back to a place where time stands still. And I’ll feel superior again. Because nobody there had the nerve to attempt even a fraction of what I’ve managed.