Nice to (Re)Meet You

1 | retreat to the present

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1

retreat to the present

PEOPLE SEEM TO THINK time solves everything.

My friends definitely held this belief, taking every chance they could get to turn me into a believer. They asserted that time was an infallible elixir, with a hundred percent success rate at retrieving the broken pieces of your heart and mending them back together. Sooner rather than later, they even assured me, doubling down on this time-heals-everything agenda.

I let out a scoff.

If that was true, why did my heart still prick at the thought of him, a little over a year later?

I shook my head.

A minute ago, in the hallway outside my apartment, I heard snippets of a song blasting through the walls, because of which, so easily, so fast, the memories that I'd tried so hard to bury buoyed back up to the surface.

It was always that day.

The day I was dumped. The day in the hospital when my ex broke up with me, an act of cruelty under the disguise of logic—I don't even remember you, so why should I be with you? It was the most detached I'd ever seen him be, so much so that he resembled a stranger.

Well, to him, I was a stranger. So it didn't matter that we shared an apartment. It didn't matter that we worked at the same company.

Not when he'd gotten into the accident on his dad's birthday, moments after he landed in his home state to celebrate with his family. Not when his parents had been traumatized, wanting him to move back in. Not when, because of his amnesia, he had no reason to return to our home, to the life we had together.

Especially not when I was the outsider. The outsider that dropped everything she was doing and camped in the hospital he was admitted to, with his recovery being the only thing on her mind.

Seventeen days.

I'd stayed there for seventeen days, accompanying him for every grueling procedure, every heart-rending test. In those seventeen days, I'd learned that he'd lost five years of his memory—the entirety of our relationship. And in those seventeen days, I'd hoped, with ever-growing apprehension, that if he couldn't accept my love, he'd at least accept my friendship. Because I knew—I knew—that he was still in there, that even if his mind couldn't remember me, his heart, without a doubt, did.

Obviously, I was wrong.

Because on the seventeenth day, when the doctors finally gave him the go signal to recover at home, he cut me out of his life forever. Not a single thank you. Not a single sorry.

Just a single see yourself out the door.

I couldn't believe it. At that time, I simply refused to. I reasoned with myself—perhaps he was just overwhelmed. By me, by his head injury, by the loss of his memories. Perhaps he just needed more time—the doctors said he wasn't a lost cause, after all. There was a possibility he'd remember.

So with that lethal dose of hope, I didn't push. I took it in, implored him to take good care of himself, and bid goodbye to his parents, thinking I'd be seeing them again in time. And I flew thousands of miles back to our apartment, which was somehow both hollow and teeming with his absence. The kind of absence that was so strong it was omnipresent.

That was when the waiting began.

Days turned into weeks. Weeks morphed into months. And months welled into a year. Still no message. Still no call. Still no notification on social media. When I got worried that something might've happened, I almost lost self-control, almost dialed him. Almost booked a flight straight to his door.