I thought you would’ve
grown your hair longer by now, or would have a few tattoos,
maybe even a beer belly.
But I didn’t quite recognize
you, after years of not seeing each other. I had braced
myself for anything, but had not expected to see that
you hadn’t changed at all -- clad still in your
favorite and now faded yellow shirt, your hair tied
back in a sloppy ponytail, wearing your silver bracelet
with your name engraved on it, and holding on still
to your old childhood dreams.
We had nothing else left in common
but the past, so we pierced through the awkwardness
with stories we both knew. Old, treasured secrets were
finally conveyed, albeit without their previous significance.
Ten years’ worth of overdue apologies were given,
bringing back with them old, otherwise forgotten hurts
I would rather not have remembered.
You were overflowing with enthusiasm.
I was feigning indifference, unnerved by how little
you’ve changed; how your aspirations remain the
same even after a decade’s worth of frustrations.
How, like a naïve schoolboy, you still dream of
becoming a famous rock star, and of one day finding
your mother who never once looked for you. How you still
laugh and smile like a little boy confident that the
world could never forsake him.
You have always been in love with
what you can someday become, constantly moving that
‘someday’ further into the future every
year you get older, refusing to let go of childish hopes
even in the face of absurdity. And I, too, had once
been in love with what you could someday have become,
weaving my dreams along with yours. Then ‘someday’
came, and I moved on while you waited patiently still.
I remember how inanely jealous
you were of the time I spent in school rather than with
you, who refused to enter college. How you would sometimes
wait for me after my classes, or else would tell me
to go home directly afterwards to talk to you over the
phone. How I eventually ran out of stories to share
with you, and of stories with you in them, and started
to move away.
I have long since learned to form
and re-form ambitions depending on present circumstances;
to hold on to nothing but the belief that any situation
can be adapted to. I learned not to long for your presence,
and adapted to being without the one person I knew would
defend me even when we were both aware of how wrong
I was.
You remarked at some point that
that was perhaps your main role: being the one who never
changes; who never quite moves on – the one you
want to see only when you realize that everything has
changed too much too soon. The one always left behind.
You kept asking me why I stopped
caring, so I finally answered what you later said were
the most honest yet hurtful words I had ever said to
you:
I grew up. We all have to, eventually.#
Philippine Collegian
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