[personal] another life

I’ve lived whole other lives. 

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I filled it with adventures and travel and discovery, food and photos and one Christmas all alone on a Zanzibari beach; my skin so brown and flecked with sand and sea. It took me an age to shake it all out of me.

I filled it with people and laughter; stories about airports and wide smiles when rendezvous-ing in new cities; hundreds of emails with book recommendations and playlists or a short, ‘I was thinking of you’ when I was; unrequited love/like; tennis matches; jumping around at gigs;  a new crush and heartbreak. 

I danced around that right time/place line so many times and never quite crossed over. 

I wonder what happened to people who let go of me as I did of them; where our lives intersected so briefly and beautifully for a moment.

I wonder If they think of me as I do of them; if they imagine what it’d be like to see each other unexpectedly- in a pub, a coffee shop or a book store like we used to go to. If they’d still trust me to recommend a book, an album, or tell me hundreds of things. 

I wonder if I can still make them laugh, if we have anything in common any more, if they’d like who I am now.

And I wonder if they miss me like I miss them.  

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Sometimes, my heart is full of nostalgia. Of looking back and wondering ‘what if?’, of tracing out parallel lives in alternate worlds - would I be doing something else, being someone else if I’d taken a step, held back, crossed a line, said no (or said yes), responded to that text, found a way to stay still…

Would I still be in your life? Not relegated to learning about your big life news (heartbreak, love, loss, children, parents, grief, celebration) via a flippant social media post? Would I still know your favourite recipe, your thoughts on the new Taylor Swift, or how you feel about being a parent? Would you still trust me to hold your secrets close? 

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I’m not brave enough to write and say hello. 

I don’t know what happened, but I was in your life one second and cut out in another. 

Would knowing why make it hurt less? 

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When I’m in the city, I avoid our favourite book shop. It isn’t just the stray chance of seeing you that gives me pause, it’s not knowing what I would say and perhaps what my face would betray. 

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(maybe it’s not your favourite book shop anymore.)

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You never tagged me in it, but I saw that post you wrote calculating just how many thousand miles away I was. 

Damn, indeed. 

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