20 years of Friendship

There are people who reappear in your life like forgotten melodies—uninvited, unexpected, but strangely familiar, as if time had simply paused between verses.

I received a message from someone I once quietly loved. Not in the way songs describe love, but in the way certain names make you look up without knowing why. We were young. We had no language for what we felt, only small gestures—saving coins to share cheap candy, sitting on a bench that didn’t belong to us but somehow did.

When she left, I was too young to understand what leaving truly meant. But it was my first rehearsal with absence, and like all firsts, it carved itself into me without consent. It wasn’t the kind of heartbreak that made you weep into pillows—it was quieter than that. Like a door left open on a windy day.

Years passed. I thought the memory had dulled until her message reopened it like a wound that never healed properly, just scabbed with time.

She said she was back in town. Wanted to have coffee. Wanted to talk about life.

Life. That slippery, shapeshifting thing we chase and resent and occasionally dance with. I hesitated. I’ve changed—I think we all say that as if we know what it means. The truth is, sometimes we haven’t changed, we’ve just hidden better. Or gotten tired of trying to explain the parts of us that broke.

Still, I said yes.

And when I saw her again, I understood what nostalgia really is—not the past, but the ache of who we were when we still believed certain things were possible.

She hugged me like we were still thirteen. I didn’t expect to feel anything. But I did. Not love. Not longing. Just… recognition. That I had once existed as someone gentler. Less defended.

We talked. She was healing from something big. A divorce. A collapsed life. She wanted honesty but I fed her platitudes—because that’s what I’ve learned to do. Speak in sterilized fragments that sound like wisdom but feel like air.

She saw through it.

“You’re like a dog chasing a bone that doesn’t exist,” she said.

I laughed, but it stung. Because she was right. I’ve been moving through life as though there’s a singular answer waiting. That if I dig hard enough—into books, into people, into pain—I’ll find it. But some questions don’t want answers. Some are there to shape us, not solve us.

She told me that sometimes we’re unhappy not because we lack something, but because we’ve been chasing things that were never really ours to want. That most of what we suffer comes from trying to meet someone else’s definition of a good life. We’re told what to become. We obey. And when it doesn’t feel right, we think we are wrong—not the script.

That made me pause. Maybe she’s right. Maybe suffering is the soul's rebellion against borrowed dreams.

She said, “Savor the pain. Cut yourself open if you must. Let the rot escape. It’s not cruelty—it’s healing.”

And I realized, as I sat across from her, that we often mistake strength for silence. That withholding isn’t maturity—it’s fear. And maybe I’ve feared too much. Feared being seen. Feared admitting that some nights I wonder if I’ve already lived the best parts of my life.

But something about her presence—the way she listened, the way she carried her pain like a quiet trophy—made me want to speak. Not to confess, but to share. There's a difference.

I didn’t say everything, but I said enough. And sometimes that’s all we need. A space where the sharp edges of truth don’t feel like weapons. Where someone nods and says, “I know.”

She didn’t want me back. I didn’t want her back. That was the beautiful part. There was no transaction. Just presence. Just a quiet, unexpected grace. We didn’t fall in love. That chapter ended long ago, if it ever began. But something was rekindled. A tenderness. A reminder. That the past isn’t always an anchor. Sometimes it’s a lighthouse.

We sat again on that old bench. Bought the same candy we once shared. Laughed over things that no longer mattered but still somehow did. Everything had changed, but that moment felt untouched by time. Not because we wanted to return to it, but because it reminded us that we had been there. That we mattered, once.

Healing isn’t about erasing what hurt. It’s about integrating it. Letting it have a seat at your table without letting it run the meal. And the presence of a true friend—someone who’s seen your early pages and still wants to read on—makes the weight of existence feel less cruel.

Maybe we’ll never trace the full design of the universe. Maybe we’re just shadows fumbling through light. But if someone sees you—even once—it proves you’re real.

We weren’t a love story.
We were a footnote.
And somehow, that was enough.