She was sitting at a small table by the window. It wouldn’t be for another half hour before the person she had to meet was going to show up. She was gazing out the window.

Then she saw him. He exited a door beside the cafe she was sitting in and was walking across her plane of horizon. It had been four months, and he looked exactly the same as she remembered him.

It was like she was looking through a window into her past, like she was watching her past walk by her.

He was looking into the distance ahead of him and didn’t see her. And then he turned a corner and the moment was over.

She instinctively picked up her cell phone to call someone, to text someone, to tell someone. But then after a minute of staring blankly at her phone, she set it back down.

It’s this vicious compulsion to find out.
It’ll upset me, but I can’t stop checking.
Unjustifiable and incontrollable.
Maybe I’m looking for the ultimate closure. 
Or maybe I’m waiting to be reassured that this was the way it was meant to be.

People get so easily caught up in their own lives that they forget about you.
I just want to know that in the midst of all that busyness, you took a second and thought of me.
Not asking for anything out of it. I just want to know you remembered.
Sometimes it is the thought that counts.

You know it’ll hurt you to see it. You know it won’t change anything. But you want to know. You want to who she is.

You quickly skim through the pictures. You see a picture of a birthday girl. It’s labeled “me + my sister in law”. You keep flipping through. You come to another girl. He’s standing beside her, his arm wrapped around her. They’re both looking into the camera, smiling really big. They look happy. You look down at the caption. It’s labeled “me + her name”. You see another picture of him and her. And another. And then you know. That’s her. She’s really quite pretty. And deep down you knew from before that that’s what she’d be like.

So now what do you do?

Are you supposed to be happy for them? Or hate them for being happy? Hate that it’s not you? Are you supposed to cry scream kick or yell?

Or do you hope that one day seeing this picture again won’t hurt you?

Please

Thank you

So simple. But so practical.
Sometimes I think they’re underrated.
Please make use of them. Thank you.

Sometimes we forget how much comfort we can derive from a simple touch.

An elderly Italian woman with chin length pale blonde hair and piercing blue eyes sat in front of a desk that curved around her. Her right arm slid slowly across the table from her right side to her left, and then slowly back. “Push push push push push,” she cheered herself on. After several repetitions, she stopped and looked at the young girl sitting beside her. The girl smiled a huge smile and told her, “one more.” “Push push push push push,” the elderly woman went. When she finished, she once again turned to the girl beside her. “Finito?” The girl nodded. “Yes! You did a great job! Let’s take a rest.”

The girl reaches up to touch the old woman’s hair. “You have really pretty hair.” The grandmother looks at the girl’s long black hair and tells her she has really beautiful healthy hair. The grandmother asks, “How long have you been working here?” The girl tells her, “For about four months now.” The grandmother nods.

The grandmother begins to tell the young girl her story. She tells the story of how it happened, how it affected her right side, and how she ended up here. She talks about the impact on her family. Her granddaughter was around the same age as the girl.

Then she looks up slowly, her eyes with a distant look in them. “Sometimes I ask my mom and dad to take me too.” The young girl puts her hand on the grandmother’s arm. Then her blue eyes look straight into the young girl’s and in that moment, they share a common understanding.

A touch that communicated something words cannot.
Maybe it provided a little bit of support and strength for her to hold on a little bit longer.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

I remember my earliest answer was,
I want to make a difference
I want to change the world.

It was a grand idea of course. But while growing up, my dream got cloudy with what seemed like other more important things. Things like financial and economic stability, and status and prestige. Things like going after something that I felt like I could achieve without reaching out too far. Maybe it was taking the easy way out. Maybe it wasn’t.

So then I completed highschool and entered university with these more concrete ideas in mind. But they led me into a dead end. I was no longer motivated to keep going, because I didn’t enjoy what I was doing and it just didn’t feel right. Intrinsically…it wasn’t right. And so I ended up in the middle of no where, and needing to start over.

I didn’t know it, but I wasn’t really starting over. I hadn’t forgotten my childhood dream. I’m still on my journey, and I’m not there yet. But I know I will get there.

If you ask me now what my dream is
I would tell you,
I want to make a difference
I want to change the world.
Even if I make a difference just for one person,
If I can just change one person’s world
Then that would be just enough for me.

You can’t assume two people that walk right by each other are strangers.

It’s the beginning of summer and a spring breeze still lingers in the air. She’s walking toward the subway station with her mp3 plugged in. From a distance she sees a figure that she instinctively recognizes. Maybe it’s the way he walks, or maybe his stature, or maybe just simply his presence. She can feel her heart skipping a beat, and her breathing picks up. He’s walking in her direction.

Memories begin to play in her head like a motion picture. She remembers the first time they met, and how he introduced himself to her as her new lab partner for the next three weeks. She remembers the first time he sent a spark running up and down her spine. She remembers how she got to know his smile, the sound of his laugh and how she came to like the way he called her name. And then she remembers how good he was at making her smile.

She remembers the first time she realized that it was love. And that she had never before loved anyone the way she loved him. And maybe this love was something she’d keep with her forever.

These sweet memories come to her first, but they weren’t the last. She remembers that day vividly. That day he showed her the ring. That day he told her about her. She remembers the initial shock, the smile she fought to plaster onto her face, and then breaking down the moment she turned her back to walk away. She remembers her world stopping for the next month. She remembers heart break.

Then she remembers how they slowly slip apart. A choice she didn’t make. His eyes no longer meet hers, and his friendly greetings disappear. He distances himself away from her, and this time she feels frustrated and disappointed in him. She remembers that the last goodbye wasn’t vocalized.

As the film of their past memories is about to come to a close, she is only about a metre away from him. She looks up. And just for a moment, their eyes meet in acknowledgement of each other. And then the moment passes, and they return to being strangers. They walk by each other and continue on.

It’s how they started. And how they end up. As strangers.
But it’s not a perfect cycle. Because they’re not the same strangers as before.