Exception

“The present changes the past. Looking back you do not find what you left behind.” 

Kiran Desai

~

An old friend once told me that anyone, no matter how much you love them, can be replaced by someone else. I still remember how I laughed and told him that his statement is an insult to everything I believe in, and that his view of the world is very sad. I recently met up with this friend after a few years of distance and when I saw him he still had that same look of detachment in his eyes. He thankfully knew me well enough to skip the small talk and the fake bullshit, and a minute into our conversation, he dropped the bomb, with his careless gaze piercing through my supposedly heavily-armored mind:

"What happened? Your eyes look almost as faithless as mine."

My reaction was that I looked away, downward then to the right with that smile people wear when someone sums up their past with a catchphrase, the same one they use when a very close person unknowingly calls them by the word that strikes at all their inner scars. It was at that moment that I realized how right he was about almost everything and how I simply couldn't see it because of my childish ideals. I wanted to discuss the "anyone can be replaced" issue but whatever I was going to learn wasn't worth reminding him of the people he lost. Instead, I shifted the subject from faith in people to faith in God and then to the difference between faith and religion. 

I didn't tell him what happened because I didn't want to boost his faithlessness. 

But it's actually plain, simple and uncomplicated: We're all the same. We are the forgotten that forget, selfishly replacing the people who once lived in our hearts. We're all the same. And it happens in a blink. You spot a stranger and you close your eyes with the feeling that these strangers have become family, that they're an immortal part of you. And then, a few years later, you open your eyes to see that they're strangers once again. More importantly, you see that your wish upon a stranger is sadly a very common one. We're all the same and everyone keeps blinking at the strangers around them. We're all the same, used and replaced, using and replacing our own hearts, as if they meant nothing to us. We're all the same, a faithless dreamer whose memories were dreams that never happened, whose words of love were perhaps just a love for words, and whose hugs were terribly, terribly convincing lies. We're all the same, replacing old words and feelings with new ones. 

You recently told me that I was different from everyone else you've ever met and I told you that I see beautiful things around you. I should have added that I'm not different, that we're all the same. But instead I told you that I'll be leaving soon and you told me that you would give up the world for us to stay together. But I didn't say anything because you used a word that an old version of me used to share with a girl who was once just like you.

I don't know how you manage to remind me of how I used to be when I was a kid, how you talk and smile like that girl used to when she was a kid, how you don't mind that you sometimes remind me of the person you replaced and, most importantly, I don't know why I can't stop seeing beautiful things around you. I don't know why you feel like an exception.

So what happens next? And why are you here at such a terrible timing? What if we're all kids pretending to be grown-ups? And what if I told you that my once empty heart doesn't feel so empty anymore? What if I told you that I'll have two pictures of you in the apartment? Would you come visit, accidentally fall asleep, and wake up with your head on my shoulder in both picture and reality? Will your smile still be broken then?

What happens next?

~

“I’ll rearrange my love for you like I’ll rearrange the living room furniture. But first I have to replace everything.
” 

Jarod Kintz