Today feels like the past. Like the home that was and my childhood bedroom when it stays light out later and the sidewalks are warm under my feet. Like coconut popsicles and my mom listening to music while she cooks us dinner. Like corn on the cob and water melon and the smoky smell of the grill and the sky is purpley pink. Like love and safety and family and something whole.

It’s disorienting. Trying to remember specifics but it all folding and collapsing in on itself, skipping and repeating and becoming one jumble of a memory that I can’t hold onto. Like the warm sidewalks. Like the grass that I water, alone in the front yard with the dirt under my feet, feeling happy and calm and a little grown up. The smell of water on the pavement in spring and then summer and then it all fading away. Laying on my stomach, on the quilt that I’d always had but have since forgotten, reading my favorite book, the one with the lime green cover and pages ever softening, summer after summer, there in my room—my small, beautiful, unfolding world. Laughing and dreaming and feeling it in my heart. IMing on my desktop computer and feeling lonely in the afternoon. Eating Kit Kats and watching A Walk To Remember everyday because it was promise, and hope was not in vain. Patience and faith and love and sincerity and self-confidence because everything was possible and everything was going to be okay. Afraid but not paralyzed by the future. I feel it now, frozen—at the thought of of losing my parents, of missing chances, of regretting so much and not being able to recover from it. Of aching to love and be loved.

She knew something, that girl who ran outside, warm sidewalk under her feet and eyes wide as she stared up at the purple sky and the V of geese painting across it. Everything is distant now. I feel old, not just older, and disconnected. A life that looks whole, with a job and with friends and experience and a gym membership, but somehow less. She was it. There was something steady in her, something knowing. Something imperfect and self-conscious and unsure but so breathtakingly ready for life. I want to know what she knew, to feel what she felt, to love like she loved, believe like she believed. In the future and in people and in love and in everything coming true. There, standing on the sidewalk, looking up at the sky, a dream in her heart.

I forgive you and didn’t realize until yesterday that I needed to.

I hurt you.

You hurt me.

I forgive you.

And if one day you find yourself in a situation that isn’t so clear cut, where you make a choice that forces you to question yourself and what you’re doing and what you want and who you love, and you’re not sure of anything, and regret and certainty teeter shakily, simultaneously at odds and in concert, maybe then you and I might have something in common again. Maybe I’ll be less of a villain and more of a human, like you, like all of us. Maybe then the letter I wrote you will make sense. And maybe not. Maybe we both are who were are, fully formed and certain of/set in our world views, our lines in the sand. From my own experience I don’t think that’s the case for me. I feel change in everything, swirling inside and sparking. Every day is a lesson, every second, every thought. It’s my walk home from the gym, when that one song plays at the exact right moment and the sky is beautiful. It’s the food I eat, the clothes I wear, the route I take to work. It’s being afraid of death and the anticipation of missing my parents. It’s procrastinating on my taxes, it’s my stomach aching from laugher, it’s feeling grateful and full of love. It’s the fear/excitement of what I hardly dare to hope for and it’s the look on his face. Renewal, regret, eyes wide and open and ready, bowed in humility, feeling awake and invincible. Proof that I’m alive I’m alive I’m alive and thank god for that. Thank god that everything is still hard and requires something of me. I’m alive. I’m living. Far from realized or certain or overcome with conviction. And far from lacking fault or blame or the space for derision. And all that’s okay with me. More than okay. I’m alive. I’m living. Constant and full of grace and something worth fighting for.