Finishing yesterday afternoon was tough, and it was especially so due to something that happened almost immediately after. I’m not going to get into it now, though I might later. The reason I’m mentioning it now, however, is to get an idea of how I felt today.

Well, I felt shit.

I got ready, hopped into the car and drove off to Broadway Shopping Centre. I was parking there to go nearby to sit an aptitude test for the chance to get an interview. Dressed up for it, made my hair neat… all the things. Started storming whilst I was getting ready. Fun times.

I walked out of the car park and into Broadway, and I looked around. I had been in there kind of recently, but it felt so different to what I was used to, and I felt like I wasn’t there.

I used to spend a fair bit of time in Broadway when I lived in Glebe. Did my food shopping there, you know. Usual stuff. It was close enough to home to walk there and back, and normally I’d be in and out due to going early. It was a different time. The place looked modern, but old, and I suppose it was inevitable that it would change. Shops often are transient things, though usually lasting longer than the time people spend in and around them. A lot of the shops that were once there aren’t. Some still are, but they too seemed displaced in memory.

I walked on through and I felt like a ghost. I felt like a lingering past that had no right to be there. My time in Glebe had been and gone, which is kind of fine in a way. But it’s also saddening.

Well before I did, a friend of mine lived in Glebe for a few years. A few of my friends have, really. It’s a place where you sort of do a mandatory stint in whether you want to or not. Glebe attracts a lot of different people and it used to be cheaper, and it most certainly isn’t these days. It’s a shame, and I’m sure plenty of others would feel the same about the period when I lived there; too expensive, too gentrified. I’ll admit that. But I look at it now, and I look at Broadway, and I feel left behind. I feel like I miss the area, and I don’t want to be. I don’t want to miss it, because there’s not much of anything to miss. Where I am now is fine, and I’m going to be missing that too, soon. But I do miss the convenience of Glebe, and the not feeling so isolated, not that I am.

I miss what Broadway was, but it was always going to change, and inside it, before heading out into the rain I was part of it, but I didn’t exist there. I wasn’t there anymore, because my time with Broadway passed many years ago.

The time it took to write five-hundred words: 09:10:89

Bit slow and not great, but I’m glad I was able to articulate what I was thinking whilst I was in there.

Written at home.