As I Disappear

Three years was a long time. Three years was once how long I spent as a full-time college student. Three years was once the difference between childhood and adulthood. Three years have passed since three years ago. Three years ago was a long time.

Three years is not a long time anymore, of course. I know enough of age to not say that anymore (except maybe in situations of small talk at work, when I want to play the token zoomer). Three years have passed with a turning of the head, a glance at the person who just walked by. Such a familiar face… maybe I knew them in college; maybe I saw them in a viral tweet. Maybe, but that was three years ago.

Time passes; I find it harder to hold on to three years ago. The people I loved, I still love just as much. But why is it so much harder to text them back? Why do I no longer think as often of the places that I craved to return to, not too long ago? On Instagram, I see photos and videos of the people and life I left behind to chase stability, and I feel a pang— but just a pang. Not a Caroline Polachek Pang, no. No drawn-out, high-pitched drama. Just a staccato, dull pang, gone with a scroll to the next photo.

It’s not that I don’t miss them. I just no longer feel like part of that world. I am different: naive to the things I do not know, but grown from the three years I spent away from my last home. At the beginning, chasing what I had before I left led me to loneliness, confusion, and a deeper hollow than anything I had ever known. I was shackled to what I thought I could return to, but I was wrong. There wasn’t any recovery to be made — only change.

Change was different, but change was always going to be okay. Of course, what I found was nothing like the blissful days spent with my college roomies-slash-best-friends… but neither for better or for worse. Just different.

I’m grateful and happy to know the people I know now. I’ve found a new version of me through them, too. And was I going to stay in the past forever?

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But, as I disappear from three years ago, I still feel the pang. Oh, the loss that I have experienced to find the reality I face today. The life I would have lived, had I not chased stability. How different would things be? How would I feel right now? (Would I have ever gone to therapy?)

As with many things, I do not linger on this. I will no longer regret the choices I have made to become the me I am, because that would be rejecting myself. I will not, because tomorrow I have work, and I will do my laundry, and I will cook a delightful chicken pot pie. I will begin packing to move to an apartment one mile away, and I will think awful thoughts about my landlord, and I will go to bed at a reasonable time. Tomorrow, I will change something.

I’ll see you later.