I met my younger self for coffee.
She was five minutes late. She didn't take off her sunglasses or baseball cap once she was inside. She let them adorn her as if they created a cloak of invisibility around her; desperate to fade into the nothingness she felt. I smiled at the irony that it only made me see her completely.
I was ten minutes early. A habit I picked up from my new hometown, where being on time is late, and being early is on time. I passed the time people watching, without the need to check my phone or put in earbuds or appear distracted in anyway.
My chin always remained parallel with the ground - an open invitation for life to happen through me, instead of to me.
She ordered a hot chocolate.
I ordered a matcha latte.
I saw her expression turn to confusion as she was eyeing me closely, trying to decipher how old we were. She didn't think we'd make it to 20.
Honestly, I didn't think we would either. I told her we're 27 now.
She asked why? "Wasn't it always going to hurt this much?"
I gave her a sly smile. I knew to approach this differently. Everyone else was giving her some sort of positivity concoction, verging her closer and closer to implosion. I told her what no one else would.
"Fall apart. Set your life on fire. Grieve. Loudly. Destroy everything until you're the only thing that's left. And when that happens, you'll find yourself in a period of such profound silence, there'll be nothing more for you to do than ask yourself, 'is this really how we want to feel forever?'"
I saw the tears start to trickle down her face. Her invisibility cloak did nothing to conceal her devastation. "But he said we would move on," she said choking back tears. "He can't be right about that."
I nodded in understanding. This has to have been one of the hardest beliefs to let go of. Even though it's been years down the line, seeing her like this now reacquainted me with my old friends; anguish and despair. We had been so tightly woven together, it was impossible to tell where they stopped and where I began.
"I never said we moved on. There is no moving on. It'll always hurt. I just said one day it'll hurt, but you'll put your seat belt on again. It'll hurt, but you'll sing in the shower again. It'll hurt but you'll belly laugh with your friends. It'll always hurt."
This seemed to appease her. Pain had been our greatest companion. It was too early to try to separate them. And even if her and I have now gone our separate ways, I look back on our time together fondly; knowing that Pain was the only one who understood what the occasion warranted. I respect her for that.
"Well, I see we still wear all black," she teased, a little humor poking through her otherwise lifeless facade.
I giggled, "Not all habits need to die."
Always with love,
Audacious Fool
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