I\u2019ve lost count of how many things I\u2019ve written about you, about me, or about us\u2014but I do know this: there\u2019s something we do exceptionally well. We pause ourselves for years, only to press \u201cplay\u201d again and continue as if nothing had happened, as if everything had. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
We were just twelve-year-old kids, remember? Twenty years have gone by, and with them\u2026 what, fifteen pauses? But fate is what it is, and we can\u2019t escape it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In this pause, there are days when flashbacks of our last \u201cplay\u201d come rushing back to me\u2014of that night at the wedding. I remember you telling me that with the dress I chose, I could ask you for anything I wanted. But I didn\u2019t. And you didn\u2019t do much to keep me either. That night, I was yours\u2014read and interpret that however you like. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
We went together to a public event without caring about anything, as if we had never paused, as if we had never left each other, as if we had never broken apart. And then, with a few drinks in us, we ended up spending the night together, leaving clothes scattered wherever we went, and me, of course, sleeping in a T-shirt from your university and a pair of your pants that were way too big on me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Your brother found us asleep the next morning\u2014me on your favorite pillow, you holding me, playing with my hair. The three of us burst out laughing and had breakfast together, like family, like in the old days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Twenty years later, people still remember us together. Even though I\u2019m married, even though you live with someone. How long has it been now? Seven, eight years? I\u2019m not lying when I say that even in this pause\u2014which I know will be a longer one\u2014we\u2019ve stayed in touch. You still reply to my stories, and I know I shouldn\u2019t respond to those messages\u2014who knows who might see them. And when I\u2019m in trouble, I still call you, pretending to be a client, and you fix whatever\u2019s going on in that moment\u2014only for us to go back to pretending we\u2019re strangers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I won\u2019t have the nerve to betray the person I live with\u2014but I do have the nerve to deceive myself when I say I don\u2019t think about you anymore, or that I don\u2019t feel you anymore. I don\u2019t fantasize about fairy tales or about us finding each other again, but I do often wonder what it was we did to always end up meeting again. I think about how the distance I\u2019ve tried to put between us has never been enough, and above all, I think about the answer to this: why do we always, always choose to come back? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
We were never toxic\u2014there were no fights, no disrespect, no violence. But I don\u2019t know how healthy it is to always return to you, and you to me. I\u2019m consumed by the question of what we were, because people see us pause and continue, pause and continue, and they join in as if time had never moved forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At night, I\u2019m haunted by nightmares, thinking that maybe this wasn\u2019t a pause, but a real ending\u2014but deep down, I refuse to believe it. There\u2019s only one thing I\u2019m sure of: only we have ever been capable of pausing fate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n