Stephanie Breijo

If I tried you'd probably be hard to find

A life that I wanted but wasn't. A restaurant that suddenly announces its closure a week after I mention I've always wanted to visit. Things just slipping through my hands. Nothing to catch them underneath.

In the last two decades I've more than come to understand that life means coming to terms with impermanence, and there can be beauty in all of that too, but it's hard not to feel like so many things almost intentionally slip by without a care or concern of how much I try or want or hold on to them. A longing for things I will never have, or will never have again.

This afternoon I opened up facebook, something I never really touch anymore, and went through old photo albums. So many of those moments with him were the happiest of my life. How much I loved him. Life continues on, and things now are stable and I am loved and I love so much, but what would that other life have looked like? A child? A family unit, cozy in Richmond surrounded by snow during the holidays, extended families and making it work and scraping by, and living an entirely different existence? Or living with a quiet fear that his friend who tried to break us up with love letters and declarations of her devotion would end us eventually? Would his urges to explore (other women) that finally ended it later have happened either way? There's no way of knowing any of it.

At least things now are stable.