It’s interesting how people can be so close and over time become strangers. Whether it’s because feelings get hurt and do not heal in time for the relationship to mend or the lack of putting effort into the relationship, it never feels great when you run into that person and realize how awkward it now is. It’s almost as though time has replaced the person you were so close to with someone new. There is a sense of discomfort and ambivalence. The discomfort arises from the unknown. Should I say, “hello”? Should I just go about my business? It’s as though there is now an ocean between you that you are not quite sure how to cross and in some instances you aren’t sure if you really want to cross especially, if in the time that has lapsed, you’ve rebuilt yourself into a better version of yourself and that person represents the “you” that you used to be. Maybe that is where the discomfort and awkwardness arise from. It isn’t them that has changed at all, but you have, and they represent a “you” in your story that you aren’t entirely “ok” with. Their presence threatens to resurrect the dead you that you’d worked so hard to bury and bloom out of, taking the nutrients of that old self and letting the rest go to become more.
In this space, you wonder if the other person is still the same or if you, too, are bringing these uncomfortable feelings out of them because they’ve invested in their growth. You wonder who they are now… whether they’ve remained exactly as you knew them or whether you are in fact both new people meeting in another time and another space reminding the other of how far they’ve come. At the same time, there is a part of you that longs to rekindle that time when you were wild and careless. That person’s presence awakens the positive memories of dancing your heart out on a dance floor incredibly inebriated, but in utter bliss, moving to your own rhythm as though it was just you and nothing else existed. While you don’t wish to go back to the behaviors that you had in that time, you also miss the connection that you shared and the free-spirited person that they brought out of you.
The only way to describe this feeling is that it is bittersweet. Bitter because of the sense of loss that you feel when you see the person and feel the weird energy between you and know that your relationship will never return to what it once was. Sweet because in seeing this person, you recognize the growth that you’ve had since you’ve gone your separate ways. It’s an affirmation in a sense that you have in fact blossomed into a better version of yourself. The only thing constant is change. If we are truly living, we change, we grow, we leave some relationships and enter new ones as we journey through this life. We turn the page and move into new chapters. Sometimes when we think we’ve turned the page and are in a new chapter, a character from an old chapter reappears and forces us to face newly surfaced feelings about who we are now as if to say, “Remember me? Remember the you that you were when you knew me? Miss her at all? Miss me at all?”
This is when we can do the work to sort through the emotions that arise out of the situation and understand ourselves better. Are there pieces of the person we once were that we want to nurture and take with us or are we on the right course? Are there lessons to be learned from that relationship and its death? Is there gratitude to offer for the lessons that this person taught you? How are you different because of that person’s relationship? Are you bitter or better as a result of knowing them? Is the relationship worth rekindling? Take all of this and allow it to touch you, use it as fertilizer to grow into the person you desire to be.