fingerprints

on the people we leave behind and those we remember.

I heard through the grapevine that there’s a College Alumni weekend in Boston this September. Our College chat lit up like the Fourth of July. Are you going? I’ll go if you go. We should all get drunk at the tavern. Group reunion!! I looked at my schedule, I can’t go. But all I’ve been thinking about since is that it’s been five years since I was in College. Five long years since I’d really spent time with some of my closest friends.

I’m suddenly reminded of nineteen-year-old me who moved thousands of miles away from home to study, but also to carve a new identity for herself. I wonder if I really recognise that older version anymore. How many layers have I shed along the way? How have the years changed me, if at all? And I keep thinking about the people I used to know, the ones I don’t talk to anymore. How have we spent the last few years apart — would we even recognise who each of us has become?

I think of a guy I used to date in college who always woke up in the middle of the night to chug a glass of water. Each night, he’d rise just before dawn, sit up groggily and down an entire glass of water before lying back down. I’d stir because I’m a light sleeper, but eventually, I got used to the familiar dip in the bed as he rolled over. I wonder what he is up to. If he moved back to New Jersey like his family wanted him to. We don’t talk anymore but last night, just before dawn, I woke up so parched. I stumbled to the kitchen and downed a glass of water, part of it dribbling down my chin.

I think of how I once bought tickets to a Calvin Harris concert on a whim because it seemed like the cool thing to do, but I didn’t actually want to go. Instead, last minute, I gave the tickets away and stayed home with my college roommate and we built awful Halloween gingerbread houses. It was the first time I watched Hocus Pocus. It was pouring rain outside. Now when October rolls around and I see those house-shaped template cookies in store, I always think of her.

I was scrolling through Instagram and a photo came up of a girl I was close with; we had this dream between us to design a literary magazine. She would design it, I would do the photography. We’d find underdog writers in Boston and publish their work. She got married over the weekend in a small family ceremony by a lake in Montana. She looked so blissfully happy, so free. I wanted to tell her congrats, instead, I liked the post and kept scrolling.

In my bedroom are three polaroids in a paper frame, one of two friends and I sitting on my bed throwing up peace signs. That was taken nine years ago in our dorm room, it was freshman orientation week, I had moved ten thousand miles away from home and I barely knew these people. I loved by the end of the week their infectious energy and chaotic laughter. We were the original trio before it expanded to more people. One has moved to Hong Kong and gotten married, the other is in London, but we don’t chat like we used to.

Sometimes, I miss the people who used to be in my life. There’s this urge to reach out. Yes, to see how they are doing — to ask them what they’ve been up to for the last ten years, and if being a grown-up is everything they thought it would be. But also, selfishly, I want to ask them if they ever think about me. More than anything, I hope they know that, despite the distance, my life has been made all the more colourful and enjoyable because of them and I’m thankful for it.

Our bodies have a way of holding onto the memory of people — a smell, a noise, or a dream that reminds you of them, of a time almost forgotten. And I think there’s something profoundly sad about endings, even if it’s just a natural fading of the friendship you had. You can change your hair, get tattoos, charter an entire new course for your life, but you can never erase the fingerprints of those who once knew who you were.

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