Earlier this year, I ran into you for the first time in five long years.
I had finally stopped looking for you in crowded rooms where I knew you’d never be. I kept my head up because I was no longer afraid that you’d be around every corner waiting to pass your judgement for all the feelings I felt in all the places they could not fit with you. I had stopped going places where I knew you might be. I’d stopped letting the vague shadow of you haunt my entire existence. I was afraid to go to work, afraid to go out, I was afraid of you.
But I stopped being afraid.
And in the blink of an eye, there you were, right in front of me. You looked the same; time hadn’t changed you.
Yet, so much was different.
Not so much was different with you, though. I have faded memories of the shirt you wore. You still wear your hair the same way. You still smile in the same manner.
The difference lies with me.
I’ve cut my hair off, I dress differently, I surround myself with different people, and my sense of life has changed. Different, different, different.
Despite everything, that fear came back the second I saw you. I had never experienced such physical terror in my life. Tears stung my eyes, my chest constricted and everything I’d felt for you came rushing back to me as if no time had passed at all.
Seeing you, put me back in that place. The place where I lied, cheated, partied, mutilated myself, slept around, it even pulled me right back to that night in my bathroom when I swallowed a bottle of pills with your name on my lips.
I felt all of this before you even turned toward me entirely.
Five years of pain and anger filled my body and hardened like cement.
But as quickly as it came, it left.
It only took me that single moment to realize that although you hadn’t changed, I surely had, and I refused to let myself be buried in my own darkness again.
So before you could even see me, I turned and walked away, leaving behind everything I once wanted so dearly.