Letter 009

You’ll Keep Running Into Me.

There is something almost funny about leaving someone and thinking you get to leave all of them behind.

You can leave the relationship.

You can stop calling.

You can delete the pictures.

You can avoid my name.

But you don't get to choose all the places my memory decided to live.

I wonder if you've figured that out yet.

Because I am everywhere.

Not literally.

That would be terrifying.

But in all those tiny, ordinary things we collected without realizing we were collecting them.

But that's what happens when you build a life with someone.

The stupid things become important.

The important things become ordinary.

And then one day the person is gone, but all the ordinary things are still sitting exactly where you left them.

Then there are the songs.

Those might be the worst.

Because music doesn't ask permission before taking you somewhere.

You can be driving.

Standing in a store.

Sitting at a bar.

Doing absolutely fine.

And then the first few seconds of a song begin.

Taylor Swift comes on.

And suddenly time folds in half.

There are songs I know must belong to me in your head now.

Songs you heard beside me.

Songs I played too many times.

Songs we attached to moments without knowing we were doing it.

Maybe there are songs you skip.

Maybe you let them play.

Maybe sometimes you don't realize why your chest feels strange until halfway through.

I don't know.

That's yours now.

And then there is my hometown.

You knew where I came from.

You learned the names.

The places.

The stories.

The things that existed before you ever did.

Maybe you'll hear someone mention it someday.

Maybe you'll meet someone from there.

Maybe you'll pass through.

And for one tiny second, that place won't just be a place.

It'll be mine.

That's the strange thing about knowing someone deeply.

Eventually, the world starts developing references to them.

A city isn't just a city anymore.

A team isn't just a team.

A beer isn't just a beer.

A song isn't just a song.

They become little doors.

And neither of us gets to decide when one opens.

I have mine too.

Things I wish still belonged only to themselves.

Places I would like to visit without remembering.

Songs I would like to hear without traveling backward.

Things that were perfectly ordinary before you touched them.

I'm not pretending I'm immune to this.

That's probably the point.

We leave fingerprints on each other's lives.

Most of them aren't visible.

They're hidden in playlists and restaurants and sports teams and inside jokes and grocery-store aisles.

They're in phrases we picked up from each other.

They're in the way we order something.

They're in stories we can't tell without deciding whether to edit someone out.

Eventually, most of those fingerprints fade.

New memories get layered over the old ones.

A song becomes somebody else's song.

A restaurant becomes the place you went with friends.

A city becomes somewhere you visited years later and realized you were happy.

Life reclaims itself.

But some things stay.

And I like knowing that.

Not because I need you to miss me.

Not because I want you back.

Not because I hope every Kentucky game ruins your night.

Although that would be objectively hilarious.

I like knowing it because there was a time when losing you made me feel incredibly easy to erase.

Like you could simply walk away and everything we had would disappear with you.

I know better now.

People don't disappear that cleanly.

Not after love.

Not after years.

Not after becoming woven into the boring details of somebody else's life.

You can forget the exact sound of someone's laugh and still think of them when a certain song plays.

You can forget what you argued about and still remember the highway you drove together.

You can build an entirely different life and still hear a familiar name across a room and briefly become the person you were ten years ago.

That isn't necessarily longing.

Sometimes it's just memory doing what memory does.

So I don't need to know whether you miss me.

I don't need to know whether you regret anything.

I don't need to know whether some song comes on and makes you think about calling.

Don't.

This isn't an invitation.

It's simply something I find comforting now.

I existed there.

I mattered there.

I left evidence that doesn't require a photograph.

And somewhere in your life, probably when you're least expecting it, something completely ordinary is going to remind you of me.

And for three seconds, there I'll be.

Then the moment will pass.

The game will keep going.

The song will end.

You'll continue whatever you were doing.

That's okay.

Because I finally understand something I didn't when you left:

Being left is not the same thing as being erased.