Sometimes I think of all the versions of myself I’ve been, all the places I’ve seen and all the people I’ve met. All the people that have changed my life and all the people that I will never see again. Because you know, some people are just passing by.
But all those things — that are never just things — made me who I am right now, writing this, getting farther and farther away from you. And what I was like when you met me, I was someone else, I was me, but at the same time I was all those things you’ll never know about.
You, at the same time, were all these things I’ll never know about: all these versions of yourself. And this version of yourself, the one you decided to show me for a while, while it was still right, is the one that I keep. The one that makes sense, because it’s the only one I learned to know about.
Because for a moment we — and all the versions of ourselves — were in the same space, making sense. We were just revealing whatever truth was in our heads at the time.
And we show each other what it was like to be us.
In a world of missed connections, I’ve lost plain tickets, keys, and some money. What have you lost, recently? A friend, your phone, and something else maybe? I was just wondering since I’m just counting all my losses.
Because so many times I thought that I had something to find out learning seconds later that I didn’t. Many times I thought I had lost something, to find out later that I just let it go.
We did something, we were something.
There are many things I can lose. There are many things I will forget. There are things I hope to find again, and that yet, I never will. I’ll never come back to that moment where I had that. That little moment where all the possibilities seemed possible and all the connections seemed there, floating around, waiting to be caught. Like that perfect moment where everything was supposed to be fine, actually, more than fine. Perfect.
But I lost it, we did.
Now that we are apart, you, wherever you are and me, wherever I am. Missing our connections. Dialing other numbers, sleeping in other beds, reading other things and discussing them with other people. Because that is who, we are right now. Do you like it? Do we like it?
I think we do. You’re not the “you” I used to know, and I’m not the “me” sometimes I think I am. I am the “me” that the ones who can see me know about. What would you do if you saw — the me — you know? Would you run or would you just smile?
I imagine you wouldn’t say much. You never used to say much. Would you grab my hand or would you just treat me like a stranger?
I know what I would do at least the “me” of now at days. I would feel strange — like in a dream — because you don’t belong to this place. Then I would smile, out of nervousness, and maybe then, I would grab your hand just to let it go again. Because that is the thing about missed connections, you miss them, and then you are not sure of what you are supposed to come back to, you, me, or we?
We’ll never now. I think we had it just to lose it.
Author: María Alejandra Barrios
Email: [email protected]
Author Bio: Maria Alejandra Barrios is a writer born in Barranquilla, Colombia and has lived in Bogota, Manchester and New York, where she took summer courses in Creative Writing at NYU. She is a History major with a minor in Journalism and Literature from Los Andes University. She writes short stories and is currently working on a Young Adult novel that focuses on the themes of race, class, beauty standards and growing up. She is interested in writing literature about immigration, in- betweenness and coming-of-age.
Link to social media or website: http://eclecticstories.com
