On a rainy night at the racquet club, I had dinner with Jason. With only a few more days left until I boarded my plane for college, I was trying hard not to think about the inevitable transition. The full weight of the future hadn’t hit me yet; I hung on desperately to the glorious days of summer, trying to meet with as many of my friends as possible to keep that feeling of security alive.
We had a fancy meal of steak and mashed potatoes. The pitter-patter of rain was barely audible outside as we talked under the candlelight, friend to friend, student to student, brother to brother. Our conversations took us outside when we were finished, and our words filled the air with stories and comments about the people we knew around us, the future we had planned for ourselves, and any remaining high school drama that still remained unspoken at the time.
At one point, when we stood under the eaves of the building, listening to the dance of raindrops in the silent night, Jason leaned in and told me it was okay to change. I told him that wasn’t what others said, and he replied with, “Just be the best version of yourself.”
We made promises to each other that night about the goals we wanted; we parted for our cars in the rainy parking lot as the clock struck ten, hoping that each of our promises would be kept. The night passed in an almost magical scene - the rain, the emotions, and the final goodbye.
Fast forward a few months:
I found myself sitting in the corner of a restaurant by myself, two months into college. The time was 10:34 PM. I was alone as all my friends were out at an event. I scrolled through my text messages, reading through each conversation as if they were a movie. A monster truck hit me in the gut every time I read something fragile.
Then my order came - steak and potatoes.
Almost instantly, my mind was triggered back to that rainy night that seemed like years ago. That same feeling of nostalgia came rushing back and I wondered where the times had gone. Already, a few buckets of sweat and tireless hours studying for exams, a few parties, events, and a broken relationship had gone by, and with all the emotions I could feel palpitating somewhere inside me, I thought of Jason.
All the promises we promised each other suddenly hit me and I began to wonder if they were being kept. Two months seemed so long with the twists and turns of college life. Just thinking back to what had been so mesmerizing of a talk back at the racquet club was difficult; I felt I was reaching into a forbidden past, a bucket of sand, trying to hold onto one scintillating moment that grounded me, and yet coming back empty-handed, or at least, with the sand falling through between my fingers.
Only when I bit into that meal did I realize: “Undoubtedly what is thus palpitating in the depths of my being must be the image, the visual memory which, being linked to that taste, is trying to follow it into my conscious mind. But its struggles are too far off, too confused and chaotic; scarcely can I perceive the neutral glow into which the elusive whirling medley of stirred-up colours is fused, and I cannot distinguish its form, cannot invite it, as the one possible interpreter, to translate for me the evidence of its contemporary, its inseparable paramour, the taste, cannot ask it to inform me what special circumstance is in question, from what period in my past life.”
Although promises always feel so real when they are made, I wondered at that second if that feeling was only ephemeral, and if so, are promises like that as well? I could still picture that time under the eaves so clearly, with the rain falling and Jason standing next to me, and yet at the same time, it was like a dream.
Perhaps the human condition really is made of one thing—forgetfulness. I don’t define that word as simply losing something important in the mind. Its true meaning is a description of one forever struggling to hold onto the piece of themselves we call time. It is an ungraspable entity for which we chase after endlessly, even though it exists no longer because we are already someone else by the time we remember.
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