Before you walked into my life, the moments all blurred together. Even now, after you, they are insignificant; only snatches of memory that surface and dissolve again within seconds. In my mind's eye it is like looking at images of my younger self through frosted glass; the details are unclear and the memories are faded along the edges, but the time and place are always familiar. I look back upon them and I wonder how you did that; I wonder how you managed to affect the parts of my mind that were written before you even existed in my life. But then again, you changed me in a lot of other ways that I would never have expected either, so perhaps I should not be surprised. You taught me what it means to change.
I have always known that there were lines. I lived inside them. They were my comfort; they made me secure knowing that I was walking in the footsteps of someone who had been there before me. I would face the same obstacles and boundaries as they did, but I would never encounter something that they had not. My life was predictable; secure. I had control, and I had not let you in, perhaps I would not have lost it. But I did, indeed, let you in, and from the moment I did so, you took my hand and danced me right across those lines. It makes me smile to think about how I never even missed them. I barely even noticed until I remembered to turn around and check, and by then they were so far behind me that I could hardly even see them anymore. You taught me to be fearless.
However, it was not having you in my life that changed me the most. I remember the moment that I knew I needed to leave. It scared me to know that I would be walking away from everything that I had ever known. In just a few short years, you permeated every part of my life, my heart and my mind with your simple friendship. You somehow managed to do the one thing that no one else had ever managed to do: teach me to trust someone else with everything. You drenched me in your essence, spinning me around until I could not breathe, until I was looking at the entire world from the sky and seeing the world upside down, knowing that it was more right than anything else I had ever seen. I did not know how I could ever find my way in the world without you guiding me, and I do not know how I found the courage to break away from you, but I do remember taking a deep breath and putting everything you had taught me into practice: change; recklessness; fearlessness; surrendering my comfort, and reaching for the unknown.
Which brings me to where I am now. I am worlds away from you, but I know that I am exactly where I am supposed to be. And for the first time in my life, I am able to say that I am certain that I was right about something. After you, the moments have not gone back to blurring together. They are clear and sharp, with a new sense of fragility. It is like looking at the images through perfect glass. I found my own fearlessness, my own recklessness and my own strength in the moment that I walked away from you. “I'm leaving,” I told you. But I look at the memory through clear eyes now, and maybe I was not really leaving at all. Maybe, just maybe, I was coming home.
