Ah, my. . . Yes, I remember you. But then, we never really forget the first person we lose sleep over, do we? There was only one before you, and he never made my heart freeze the way you did.
I do this every couple of years or so – start thinking of the past, wondering about you, trying to find you. This time it happened while taking a look back over the years, trying to find the moment – that one decision or statement or action – that meant that I would be here today, longing for someone I can’t have while my life gives way beneath me. I filtered man after man through levels of my memory, pondering the possibility that he was the one I should have stayed with. I began with current men and moved backward through time. My breath didn’t stop in my lungs until your face was there.
Your face was there. Inches from mine with only night separating us. I had, at that point, never felt beautiful before. Your foot brushed mine and I startled, instinctively jumping to move mine away, but I stopped short. And your foot began to move against mine, nudging at first but then smoothing upwards with slow implication. When my heart resumed beating and I was confident that I could keep breathing, my eyes met yours. “Pennies,” I thought. “They’re the color of new pennies, covered with honey.” The first of a handful of movie-moment nights that we would share.
But nothing happened that night. Nothing happened at all, save for a brief meeting of lips, before you disappeared forever. Or for at least seven years, as of this writing.
There are pictures of you somewhere. In a box in a closet, or a storage locker, stuck together with humidity and forget. And pictures of us. I tried to find them a few years back, a frantic middle-of-the-night search fraught with longing and missing you.
There are pictures of you in my mind as well. Faded colors and muted details. Without something tangible to connect with your memories now, they serve mostly to frustrate and obfuscate.
Last night, the questions and possibilities and absurdities drove me to your old emails. Most of them, I deleted long ago. The few that slipped by contain nothing of importance, nothing that would indicate we had ever touched. A rigorous string of people searches finally surfaced a J-town address for you, posted in 2004. Unlikely it’s still relevant. I searched every social networking site and returned blank profiles last updated over six years ago, close to the time we last saw each other. One contained a headshot that invoked immediate surprise at how much you have aged. A quick look at the date reveals that this picture, too, was taken only a year after we parted. Some narcissistic cell in me hopes the loss of me etched those wrinkles near your eyes, drove your hairline back that far, carved those lines in your half-hearted smile. But I believe, it turns out, that they may have been there all along; perhaps I ignored them, or saw you and all your flaws so perfectly and loved you so perfectly that they didn’t matter.
Or was I simply imagining you entirely? The lack of you suggests that you never did exist. Your absence has persisted far longer than it should for a town this small; I should have bumped into you at the library or the grocery or the comedy club by now. Were you a teenage illusion that I concocted between hours of silence and fury, imagined so perfectly that the illusion existed on its own? Manifested so completely that its lips could claim mine? Can my memories and my senses lie to me so convincingly? But I forget you way too often to suggest that you weren’t real. Until someone of your stature, with your distinctive laugh or similar gait, crosses my path. For a moment I can’t understand why the room is suddenly spinning or why I have the urge to turn and run. But before I even realize of whom I’m thinking, I realize that this person is not you. And the world, a little dimmer if only for a moment, resumes activity.
And for a while – as long as it takes me to saunter through the produce section, or to forget the call number I need – I wonder about you. Wonder where you are. Who you’re with. What we could have had. What would happen if I turn the corner and you’re there? What would life have been like?
Would I change the way we were, the way we parted?
Was *this* the wrong decision I made nearly a decade ago that set in motion the string of events that led me here, to this city, at this table, knowing these people in my life and with these experiences? Should I have stood there, tearful at midnight, watching you gently push me away, turn from me, get into your car, and pull out of my parents’ driveway, my last glimpse of you? Or should I have clung to you? Fought for you?
Maybe life gives us signs, instructions, if you will, to help us make the right choices. I’m not certain of that. There are very few things of which I am certain. But I know what I feel: that even if I didn’t make the right choice that night, you did. And the decision you made may have thrown some rocks in my road, some rough patches and tattered bridges along the way. Still, it brought me here. Even as weary and bruised as I feel from that journey, I thank you. Maybe I can imagine a different life where everything I want comes easily and where problems – if they come at all – are small and manageable. Maybe I can imagine it; but I can’t imagine living it, especially without the people I’ve met along the way.
I think I’ve watched you drive away over a million times. Never once did I watch it from the passenger seat. So though my breath may catch when I think of your face, though I may never stop looking for you in all your favorite places, I can stop wondering I made a mistake. In the end, there are no mistakes; only lessons learned.
And maybe now, I won’t ever have to watch you drive away again.
