An ode to everyone I have ever known, a wish to hold all my friends in my hands forever, and an exhale releasing the past.
I turned 20 a few months ago—an event that forces you to revisit every moment of your life you have memorized. Such revisiting has never quite been my strong suit; I have untouched Spotify playlists, way too many photos than my storage allows me for, and a constant aching feeling of nostalgia and longing to prove it. Upon my attempt at revisiting my past, I tried something different. This time I sat with every emotion and thought I felt, even when it became uncomfortable—even when my heart felt as though someone picked it up by the aorta and lightly dangled it over a bridge, or I began to feel the “nothingness” of dread wash over me, rounding my posture. I immersed myself into these past worlds, and once the river of memories drenched my clothing and filled up my lungs, I took myself out. Every time I thought back on a different memory, I could not let that aching feeling go when re-remembering the people who were there with me. Regardless of if my memories with them were ones of great joy, or if I felt on the edge of escape, there was always some fond memory that made me wish I could go back for just a day—before any complications or social implications cut off our communication. Now believing that I know the “right” things to say or do this time around.
Grappling with the last memory being the last has been hard. For some friends, I never would have thought that we wouldn’t be in each other’s lives. I wish I could go back and grab them by the shoulders and tell them “You were supposed to be here, I always imagined you here. I didn’t know that the last time I saw you would be the last, and if I knew, I would have hugged you tighter or thanked you for being my friend. I would have asked more questions so that the conversation kept lingering.” A knife twists into the soft spot between my ribs, because I then remember how for some friends, I could tell that it would be the last time I saw them; an unexpected end of an era happening on a random Thursday evening. And so, I did hug them as tight as I could, and I did thank them for being my friend, and I kept the conversation afloat for as long as I was capable. But at some point, you have to let go of one another, and there isn’t much else to say after “thank you for being my friend too”, and the conversation will reach a stalemate, and the knife will keep twisting the longer you stand there so it is better to wrap it up.
It is weird to keep living without them. Sometimes I feel guilty, other times I feel angry, often I feel nostalgic (that in itself a multifaceted emotion with which I have a complicated relationship). On some particularly high-energy days, I want to reach out. I want to tell them “I went to that restaurant we were talking about.” “You’d be proud I got over that fear.” “You were going to be one of my bridesmaids actually, but I don’t even know what your major is so perhaps not.” “I know we don’t follow each other on Instagram, but do you still remember that time we laughed until our stomach hurt? Because I do, and it still makes me laugh.” Sometimes they are the first person I wish I could tell when something good happens, other times I hope they never find out.
I was helping pick out an old friend’s birthday present and I asked if her favourite colours were still the same ones she once told me. I remember those colours, they were the only ones she would wear for a year, and she looked so herself in them. How strange, to have once been able to notice if they plucked a few extra hairs from their eyebrows one week, to being unsure of what their favourite colours are. I did not want to mess it up. I did not want her to recognize me in the gift, and should she squint her eyes and cock her head, see me begging the questions to her “Is this still who you are? This is who I remember you to be, how much has changed? Do you hate who you were at the time and completely changed your style, and by this I am embarrassing myself for not knowing the new you? Do you hate me too?” Those colours were so engraved in my mind that whenever I wore them, I pictured her wearing them as well. I pictured us accidentally matching, or her asking to borrow an article of my clothing sometime. Maybe she has a similar one hanging in her closet right now. I wonder if she wonders if I have one too.
Between the to-do lists, present ideas, and a list of one-liners my friend has said over the last six years that make up my Notes app, are diary entries, including a handful written in the form of drafts of messages. Some are sent, some I will never send, and some I copy and paste into our messages every so often before staring off in front of me, trying to picture their response. I wonder if them not texting me was a by-product of me not reaching out first, or if it was the other way around. Perhaps it was mutual. I wonder how they think about me, and I try to pinpoint the moment we started fading. Sometimes it is obvious, other times it was a slow burn in retrospect, and occasionally it was both, and those ones—should I think about them for too long—send me back into mourning. The text returning to the graveyard of unsent messages, and their frame in my museum draped in a black fabric.
Now is usually the time when you are encouraged to reach out because “life is too short” but I have personally never found that helpful regarding this situation. I have lived much of my life thinking about the future, while simultaneously feeling as though now is forever (a misunderstanding in being “present” on my end). But I know I have many more beautiful decades to live, and I also know how much can change over the course of a month let alone the rest of my life. Life is too long to let the present be your only idea of the future/forever. The years are long, and I cannot imagine living on the same earth at the same time as you, and not reaching out and trying again, because we have many more years to go.
But it gets to a point where you have to let it go.
Now is also the time you should be made aware that there is beauty and contentment in letting things be. In the art of knowing that the experience was beautiful but there will be more in the future. In the prayer dedicated to yourself that you deserve better than to go back, because it had its highs, but it wasn’t worth the lows, and you will have those highs again without the string of lows attached. Or maybe you don’t know, and your heart is aching, and to that I would invite you to let yourself feel that.
The people that I miss so badly, and the memories we made that still pay me a visit each time I smell a particular scent or hear a particular song, are all still here. As therapeutic and soothing to the brain as it may be to think of them as “lessons” or as “canon events” that have ultimately shaped me into a better version of me, I cannot help but think about the lack of acknowledgement and validation of my heart, who is not satisfied with this reduction of past people and my past relationships to them. These people whom I often miss are all still a part of me. I still wear the shoes you gave me, and a favourite side dish of mine is still one you would cook for me, and it was you that is the reason I say “ciao for now” when I am parting with someone. For some, I do not wish to be close again, but I ache for when we once were. There is this strange, almost hypocritical thought jogging across my mind, where it is too slow to be taken seriously, but too fast to catch up to regardless. In recognizing these parts of me, I have immortalized those fond memories. They are not me, I would not allow this to be the case, but they are things I have picked up along the way and added to my museum, whose backstory are dedications to those snapshots of time, so I do not have to fear losing them.
As the fabric of my being has been woven and embedded by and with everyone I have met, so too will be my core message. It comes from a friend of mine who has made a recent contribution to my museum, with an accidentally-eloquent talk on a summer he remembers. He described it fondly and stated that he is just glad he had it. There was nostalgia attached, as there always will be, but he doesn’t necessarily long to go back; he is just happy his past-self had that experience. It was a simple statement said at the end of a party—the strays all sat in a circle discussing the stories behind our music playlists—but that act of self-love was immediately embroidered into a fabric canvas in my mind, a plaque of his name hanging below, and a description reading “you have to let it go”. To its left, another embroidered statement hangs, a veil of dust covering it. It reads “it is better to love and have lost than to not have loved at all”. As I walk around my museum, as I every so often do, I blow the dust off from the canvas; it is correct, they both are. Why am I denying myself the luxury of being able to be reminded of positive moments from my past? Why must I only exist and be acknowledged of who I am presently, when it is myself from the past who allowed me to be here today? I am very grateful I experienced the love that I have. I am grateful that my first best friend was my cousin and that our seemingly inherent knowledge of one another will forever withstand space and time. I am grateful I had my friends in the 5th grade because I got to finally be myself, and I am grateful I shifted to my friends in the 8th grade, because those memories we made that year are still some of my fondest. I am grateful that I had my friends in the start of the 11th grade because they made me laugh during a time when it was hard to, and I am grateful that by the end of that year, I had a whole new friend group, because they are all still my best friends to this day. And I am glad my friend who loved wearing red, will never let me forget it because how wonderful it was to be known so deeply.
With all this being said, this melancholy only subsists when I allow it to. How unfortunate it would be if I only allowed myself to exist in these past forms, when I have people in my life who make me feel so full; aside from my innate sensitivity, I need not ever relive the past. My aforementioned best friend whom I have a list of one liners from, took me upon her pottery wheel and molded me back into a human when I felt as though I no longer was one, and we have since rebuilt one another back up when we started to bow; she is as much my family to me as my brothers are. The girls I went to high school with brought forth my epiphany that I can be loved for who I am, and they have yet to falter in proving that to me over the last five years. When my partner walks into a room I am in, I do not need to see him to feel the energy shift; my shoulders dropping for the first time that day, and the room becoming warmer, as though he contorted the building himself to hug me; he is the embodiment of sunlight. A new friend of mine clicked with me so instantly that I prayed the night that I met her because she was exactly who I was calling out for. All the new friends I have made in school bring me a new joy I haven’t experienced in this new chapter in my life, and they make the heaviness of school a little bit lighter. Each of them have a hall in my museum, filled with quotes they have said, food they introduced me to that have become my favourite, perfumes I have gotten because it smelt divine on them (and are still my go-tos), inside jokes and personas that reappear when we reunite, and placeholders for memories I wish to create. How unfortunate it would be to not recognize the additions made to my museum while I was away living in the past.
To anyone reading this who knows me, who I may have once been friends with or was once closer with. Who I have never spoken to and who I speak to every day. To my oldest friends, my newest friends, and my closest friends. To my classmates, to my friend-of-a-friends, to people who aren’t quite sure where we stand. To my elementary school class, and to my first friends, wherever you may be, thank you for your contributions to my museum. Any love I have given you is yours to keep.