I tend to overanalyze. I am an over-analyzer. And when I went home this year for Thanksgiving, a senior in college bravely embarking on a journey to the local West Hartford bars for the first time, I was not emotionally ready.
Going home and being around classmates from high school, old anatomy lab partners and fellow field hockey mid-fielders from junior year was surreal and honestly weird. I saw my younger best friend’s guy friends she’s had since elementary school dressed up in dress shirts with vodka sodas in their hands. I saw girls I ran track with and had middle school sleepovers with where we stayed up all night. Seeing these old connections was enough to make a grown girl cry, and actually, it did.
I was one of those girls in high school who had the same boyfriend all four years. Taking over my social media feed, always sitting together during lunch period each year and my signature prom and homecoming date. He was close with my family and looking back, I’m honestly grateful that I had him at that time of my life.
I ran into this discontinued male character in my life in the line of one of the bars when I was home. I am very forgiving of people, and I had no more lingering hard feelings. So, as one does, I decided to strike up some sort of conversation. This is someone with who I had applied to college alongside with, who I would do my homework with every morning before the first-period bell rang in the library and whose initials laid written under my picture in my yearbook.
I told him about my life now, how I know what I want to do and why I want to do it. I added details like graduate school plans, family updates and how happy I was to be with my “home” friends. I thought, maybe, I was doing him some sort of unasked favor, that he actually did want to know about a sliver of my life after, you know, everything.
I shouldn’t have been shocked when he returned my conversation attempt with blank stares and nods. I didn’t want to care about his response or the lack thereof, but when I woke up the next day, teary-eyed in my mother’s arms, it was obvious that my night took a small unexpected turn. My mom, the kindest woman I’ve ever known, reminded me softly that he was “not the sweet guy from school I grew up with.” And I, and the people I care about around me, have always known deep down that she was right.
And let me be clear. I don’t even like the guy anymore. We don’t talk, don’t follow each other on social media and hardly say hi to mutual friends in passing. Typical first relationship. But, I think when I ran into this man after all these years, along with all the other people from high school’s past, I couldn’t help but remember how much they knew me.
This man went on more family vacations with me than I can count. We knew each other since ancient middle school days all through a month before freshman year of college. I’m sure that he knew me more than most during my immature teenage years, acting as my personal diary and comfort object. And now, years later, he knows basically nothing.
I was suddenly in a sweaty bar, surrounded by the girls I had 7th grade gym with and shared secrets about strange personal body changes, boy crushes and how completely embarrassing our parents are. Temporary friendships from when I was 16-years-old who I survived intense and draining chemistry labs with where we would really just laugh for an hour and a half. Girls on my cross-country team who essentially had all my best times memorized. People I thought would know my kids one day or somehow be around forever (what was I thinking.)
Now, five years later we bump into each other in tight leather pants and side purses, flashing a quick smile or nod, maybe with teeth if we are feeling brave. But in middle school and high school, at that time of life, it was almost like a kind of innocent form of love in my life, being known by them.
A mantra for my life I have developed over the last year or so, alongside some personal growth, is that to be known is to truly be loved. As much as I don’t like my EX boyfriend, I know, deep down that he made the immense effort at one time in my young life to know me better than anyone else. And I choose to be grateful for that.
I’ve been met with the occasional person in life who has pretended to know me, usually a male. Saying things to me like “I don’t know, you’re just so special” after two weeks of admitting our favorite colors and maybe a shallow date or two. So deep, I know. I’ve definitely mastered how to weed this type of person out of my life, and I recommend you follow suit.
Some people are never truly known, and some choose that. I believe that love is the most powerful force in the universe and I choose to act every day with love first and foremost. I have learned that true love ultimately translates to those who commit to knowing you at all times.
I couldn’t be luckier for the amazing people in my life who know me more than I ever thought anyone could. I am reminded of this every day. My friend Lizzy who would go through books of quotes, carefully highlighting the beauty inside them and slipping it under my door for me because she knew I would love it. My roommate Miranda who texts me begging to know how my difficult exam went and debriefing with me every night on our big brown couch. My big brother who waits by the front door while I walk in at night, knowing how afraid I am of the darkness even as a grownup in my 20s.
I look to my parents, the best example of love I could have ever been given. My dad perfectly memorizing my mom’s half and half to hot coffee ratio, bringing a cup up to her every single morning. I will never not smile waking up on a Sunday morning hearing one of my dad’s favorite songs singing through our downstairs speakers that my mom has cued every weekend like clockwork. They know the very best and very worst sides of each other, but I was lucky enough to grow up seeing in their eyes and their affection that they would die to know even more. My parents chose each other because they both knew they couldn’t have lived a life without knowing one another.
It’s okay to be grateful for those who knew us at one time along the way, but the people who truly matter are those who don’t only want to know certain things. Some people may only want to know you for their own selfish agenda. In my life, I have had people who were temporary fixtures, maybe curious to know what it would be like to be skin close to me, to feel the comfort of my family or to feel my warmth as a person.
I want to one day be known by someone forever. But, in many ways, I know I always will be by my friends and loving family. And I’m lucky enough to say that the people in my life, right now, are the ones I am obsessed with finding out more about.