Reflection

She is the picture of joy, laughing on a beach in Thailand. She inspires me.

*

This morning I tweeted these words: 

The moment when you realize there are some people from your past you may never see again in life. And it's ok.

Without going into reasons, I felt the need to write those words down, to acknowledge their truth, and to move the melancholy that came with them outside of myself. 

Later in the morning, I logged back into my Twitter feed to delete those words, as they had served their purpose. I was stunned to see how many times this single tweet had been liked and retweeted. What? I'd thought it was an oblique sentiment, meaningful only to me, but I was wrong. I didn't delete the tweet after all as it seemed to have some resonance. It is a sad thing to come to terms with the fact that some relationships are unlikely ever to be what they once were. Too much has come between you. It is an odd comfort to know that the realization, and the regretful resignation it brings, are simply a part of life, experienced in some form by many.

The sweetest thing, though, was this note in my inbox from someone I haven't seen in a decade, a woman who now lives in L.A., who was only six years old and wearing a frilly yellow dress when I first met her: "This reminds me to remind you that I love and miss you very much," she wrote. And there was more, which I won't encroach on her privacy to share, but thanks to her, my mood was transformed from sadness and melancholy to love and gratitude—for all of it. For what is forever gone, and what is still to come.