between always and never: going back in time

It was a beautiful, sunny spring day, late April. We were at a bus stop waiting for her bus before I went back to my apartment. We were coming back from campus, excited about our plans, and I just felt good. It felt like a good day.

Sometimes, you confuse that feeling in your stomach, which warns you about something, with excitement.

She got on the bus, we said our byes, and I remember turning around thinking, man, that was a good goodbye. Usually, transitions are confusing for me, so spending time with someone, to having to leave, is never casual for me. It’s always accompanied by an awkward choreography of mumbled words, darting eyes, and not knowing when to leave.

Maybe it was Providence that granted me that moment of simple, naive, and peaceful goodbye with my friend, because I never saw her again.

That day was lovely, and I wouldn’t change a thing. But if I only could, I would jump into the day after. As chance would have it, we missed each other, and I was left forever wondering if anything would’ve been different if we hadn’t.

Regrettably, I lived a life full of things I want to change. But then again, it brought me here, to who I am today. So I learned to let go. But most of all, I learned that they – that nothing – compared to grief.

We were supposed to see each other again at uni. We had morning classes that Thursday.

I drove down that road many times after. I tried to understand what exactly happened. I still do, every day, and it’s eating away at me. No matter how much time passes, I’m still stuck in those few days from when it happened, when and how I found out (because that was an awful way to find out), and her funeral. What followed were months completely lost to shock and grief, with no memories, just pain and insomnia.

When I used to think about something I would change, or a day I wanted to relive, I never knew the answer. I couldn’t be bothered to go live through it again. After that day, I got my firm answer that I better not think about. It’s not easy to let go once I start thinking about the possibility, even in theory, of going back in time.

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