Je me souviens

It's been close to a year since I left the city I lived in for close to 7 years. Montreal..."Je me souviens."


I do remember...many things. Probably the 7 most defining years of my life, in a city so special it made me love it and hate it at the same time. Loved the springs, summers and autumns...despised the horridly icy winters, of which I loved the holiday decorated streets. Loved the urban lifestyle with the down-home attitude. Initially hated the bastardised French Montrealers spoke, but ended up feeling nostalgic every time I heard it. Hated my first university, loved the second one. Loved some people, hated others (some did overlap).

I'm getting nostalgic because it recently hit me that I've been in Abu Dhabi for almost a year now, and oh how things have changed. Just a year ago, I was jobless. My friends had all left Montreal. My then boyfriend had just moved back home. My life seemed to be falling to pieces and I had no idea where to start picking it up.

I'm sad that I left Montreal on a sour note. I did feel a pang leaving my sun-drenched apartment, my zany cat, the bedroom I had made my sanctuary, the Italian doorman who put a smile of my face every morning, the Haitian doorman -Bubba- who cracked me up in a slightly creepy way every night, the long up-hill to our building that left me breathless many a time. In every street of downtown Montreal, I created a memory...yet I was so anxious to start a new page that I didn't get to really feel what leaving Montreal really is.

I sat in the taxi on the way to the airport almost happy that this chapter of my life was ending.

I may have physically been there for that long, but my heart began the Montreal farewell when my friends slowly left one by one, when my brother left, when my boyfriend left. There was nothing holding me back but the memory of the life I lived there.

I'm in Abu Dhabi now, I've found a job, I've found my friends, I've lost the boyfriend. Montreal seems like lightyears ago, but I can't wait to revisit all the memories. I wonder how it will feel...