On Reclaiming A Space As Your Own

I sit at the bar surrounded by...

P.C. Jason Leung

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river, and he's not the same man.” (Heraclitus)

I sit at the bar surrounded by exposed brick walls. Beach House blares from a record player and speaker set between small pots of gnarled plants and shelves of niche, strangely shaped candles. I shake a little as I look over my shoulder.

“Thank god he’s not here,” I think to myself. But my nerves feel crackled as ever.

I make eye contact with the waiter. As I order an overpriced coffee and avocado toast, I wonder,

“Does he know him? Has he seen him here recently?”

A tinge of guilt is clinging to my shoulders. I glance at the washed concrete floor close to the racks of records they’re selling. That is where Luís and I danced together one night in early January. We had been out drinking with friends that night. I haven’t been back here since.

“I want to take you on a date,” Luís had said to me. That night in January, I had accepted that this friend gathering might be his attempt at said date night, especially as he hadn’t responded to my texts. Still, I remember how fun that night had been. I remember the cheekiness that had crept over us when we realized we were looking at each other in the same curious way. It was tempting, slippery, electric. He was already drunk, and so I had downed a couple of beers to try to catch up with him. We had reached for each other’s legs under the table, sheepishly at first. Crossing that barrier of touch for the first time together. I had leaned in closer to him, and he had peered at me over the green rims of his glasses.

We had played a game together, a simple one that we made up on the spot. He would lean in to try to kiss me, and I would turn my head away, and his lips would kiss my cheek instead. It was a delicious kind of teasing. He became more determined, only to be batted away again by my cheek. I had liked the feeling of being in control, of directing him and pacing our desire for each other. Sprinkled in with a light understanding of the other things we might do to each other if we were alone somewhere. I now wonder which of us had felt the swelling anticipation more at the time.  

We had gotten up to dance, and he had offered me another beer, and I had accepted. Now I look at the space from where I am sitting. It is five months later, in the middle of the day. I look at the space on the washed concrete floor where I let him hold me, hug me in a way like his body was framing mine. That night, we made out in front of everyone on the dancefloor. I am often a single person, and I like my singleness. But this was an opportunity to play couple. And that’s exactly what we did.

It was wonderful in the moment, yet torture for ages afterward. For months after that night, every time I went to a bar where people were dancing and drinking and enjoying themselves, I thought back to our night together in this bar, where the conversations and faces of others had melted away from us. Where we had abandoned our friends with their cigarettes and their half-drunken, deep-orange negronis. As the lights and the music warped our minds into a circle, together intertwining. To be making out with someone in a bar and to be positively obsessed with them. In spite of all his smoking weed, his unanswering of my messages, and his neglect of me, this is the memory of him I cherish the most.

So, the place where I am sitting right now developed a kind of curse around it. I could not return. I would run past it every Wednesday after my gym sessions. In each split second that I passed it, I would search helplessly between the faces of strangers, wondering if Luís was there. If he was sitting there smoking a cigarette, or being drunk with his friends again, or choosing the music on the record player.

I wrote about this in a similar way a year ago, about the places where, when we return to them, we are instantly flooded by memories of another time in our lives with another person. So much so that they seem to claim the space for us. It’s quite unoriginal that I am writing about the same thing. But I am now determined, nevertheless, to feel all the things and process them. And that means dipping back into past places and dipping into the nostalgia. Bathing in that nostalgia. That’s a strange way to see it, but that’s honestly how it feels.

When you break up with someone and need to divide things, sometimes spaces belong to one of you over the other. For example, with Luís, I have a couple of “dead zones” that I will never enter again, such as his car and his cousin’s house. As one of my favorite lines goes in this cheesy breakup book,

“Your new boyfriend isn’t standing outside your ex-boyfriend’s apartment building, so you shouldn’t be either.”

But what about the spaces you shared together? A park in your neighborhood, a bar, or a brunch spot? Some of my friends have had to move cities to truly get over an ex. Yet, for those of us who choose to stay, it’s up to us to paint new memories over a place. We can invite other people along, ideally, supportive close friends, to mix it up with us, bring some fresh blood, and layer over those other experiences. Post-relationship, we must reclaim these no man’s lands as our own. I’ve been living in the same neighborhood for two years now. If I struck out on all the places I had gone to on a date with someone, I’d literally have nowhere to go.

If you find yourself drawing parallels when you reenter a space you’re reclaiming, just trust the process. It is part of your untangling, of your memories undoing. How long ago did it all happen? How different are you now from who you were then? How have you grown? For example, today, I realized I am wearing a set of bright pink underwear, the same underwear I wore when I went with Luís to his cousin’s birthday party. I remember standing on the edge of the garden as Luís stood a little behind me, and I took his hand, and I gently put it up the back of my skirt. I let him feel the satin and the lace of my pink underwear. Although no one saw, someone might have, and that was more than half the fun of it. So yes, I am currently wearing the same underwear set. But this underwear is mine. I will continue to wear it, whether or not Luís is in the picture and whether or not I am thinking of my memories with him.

Why reclaim a space? Ultimately, it’s a question of control in no man’s land. We can’t let our memories control our decisions, where we go, or what we do. It’s up to us to decide the value or the sacredness of these places from our past relationships. Do we let an old relationship clip our wings, or do we let ourselves be free? Do we let memories etch themselves in stone into our minds? Or do we let ourselves open, splash fresh color across the canvas, and paint over it all in new forms and signals, waves and wonders?

In a world where it feels like we are constantly and endlessly dating, this is important. We are grabbing coffees and grabbing drinks and swiping, swiping, swiping. It is a new world with few rules. We can choose how to navigate it and navigate the neighborhood coffee shops and gyms and cities in which we are choosing to live, even if it scares us. Even if we worry we might see them there again. Even if we feel sad or nostalgic about the memories we cherish.

While we have been trained to value romantic relationships, we cannot be left with ever-expanding dead zones of places we’re forbidden to go to. When we reclaim a space, we also reaffirm that we ourselves have changed.

I once saw a mural of a hummingbird at Entreamigos, a social enterprise and school in Nayarit. And next to the bird was the message,

“Abre tus alas.”

It means:

“Open your wings.”

💌 ✍️

Read more stories about Luís here, here and here.