The same, but different
Around this time two years ago I’d just turned in my second essay for EN502. I uncovered it recently while looking at my old writing in preparation for grad school applications (fondly referred to as my grapps). In that essay, I wrote about the loneliness of being left behind. The inevitability of coming and going. But I’ve found that the people I know never leave; there’s just all this history I don’t know how to manage. Now that I’m at home again, I find myself asking one question, over and over: do you remember me? You were the athletic trainer that evaluated me for a concussion when I took that hard hit in high school. You comforted me as I cried from fear and pain. Now we play adult league hockey against each other. When we make eye contact on the ice, do you remember? When we were in second grade I used to go to your house after school. We’d slide down your stairs in cardboard boxes and eat frozen yogurt, and now I’m running into you at a dive bar, asking, do you remember...