The Bridge Between Who I Was and Who I Became
There are some places we remember not because anything extraordinary happened there, but because, for a few quiet moments, life seemed to slow down enough for us to notice it. Hastings was one of those places for me. It was late in the evening, and the town had already surrendered itself to the night. The sky was almost completely black, the kind of darkness that makes every artificial light seem brighter than it really is. Ahead, the great arch of the bridge stretched across the river, illuminated against the darkness. From a distance it looked less like a structure of steel and more like a doorway, connecting not merely two banks of a river, but two moments in time. I remember walking through the park, surrounded by trees, grass, silent pathways and the occasional pool of light from a lamp. During the day, perhaps, it would have been an ordinary public space. Children might have run across the lawns, cyclists might have passed, people might have sat talking by the river. But at...