Strangers Again Part 1

There was before and then there was after. This is the before.

I always hear a similar script when people get engaged or married. They always start off with “I remember when I saw you for the first time.” I can also remember distinct moments when I met people for the first time. However, when comes to my crushes, that rarely happens. All I remember is the before and the after.

Do you remember when they were just a stranger to you?

Photo by Christopher Burns on Unsplash

Where did they sit in the classroom? Do you remember you went by their office to ask for clarification on the project? When they just walked around you but never into your life? It feels odd thinking about it, doesn’t it? You can’t quite remember. Sure, perhaps there are some conversations you can recall or a laugh you shared.

But then there’s a switch. A moment when you look at them and finally see them. There is someone in the crowd and that person is them. Now all you can think about, all you can look forward to, are moments to have with them. To build all of them up so you can dream about them later, until the next one, and the next one.

The cubicle that was just a cubicle turns into the desk where you’d leave notes. The cafe on the corner is now the place you met after work. And it grows and grows.

Until you are strangers again. Until there is after. Until those places remain a space of grey of where the color once was.

The before is fascinating to me. It reminds me of what I chose to pay attention to. It reveals to me what I chose to notice and not see.

It's like when you never notice a honda accord on the road until someone you know (or yourself) buys one. Suddenly, that’s all you see. You can’t remember a time when you didn’t notice that car.

While I’ve gotten better, I have a hard time letting people go. The before is as fascinating as it is brutal. Brutal in that for some people, you wish there never was an after. You wish nothing changed, or that you didn’t pursue, or they didn’t pursue you, or that feelings developed.

Maintaining the before could save you a lot of pain, or heartache, or betrayal.

That’s the thing — you never know when the before will be an after, if it ever is.

But if it goes well?
Imagine how much awe you’re in, to remember how miserable life once was without them?

Who is your afters? Do you regret you have an after with them? Do you remember your before?

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