Facebook Messanger

I had my first love in high school but we broke up, as most high school couples do, and haven’t spoken much since. People have to leave sometimes even if you thought they’d stay, and even if they thought so too. There were times, far too many and far too late, that I didn’t appreciate this. Because sometimes it is just the times, and yours has to come to an end, like shadows watching the sunset run out. But Facebook saves your old messages for years—for the years we hadn’t spoken—and I came across ours recently.

We were young and were sharing hopes and dreams, secrets and fears, but glancing through them so many years later felt as though walking in on an intimate moment between strangers. Because her secrets and dreams were no longer meant for me, and those hopes and fears were no longer mine. I read those messages and saw two teenagers in love for the first time, and saw that as a wonderful thing that shouldn’t be interrupted by my eavesdropping. They were my words in just the same way that she was mine: no longer.

I remember walking on this beach once in Iceland where the whole of it was covered in these smooth, grey stones that looked just alike. I remember picking one up and feeling its weight in my hand before tossing it back in with the rest. But I knew what one was mine: I had held it in my hand, felt its weight, felt its texture. So long as I didn’t avert my gaze, not even a millimeter, I could tell mine apart from all the others. I remember having this sense that I didn’t want to look away. I didn’t want to return my stone to anonymity, if only because I had known its weight and texture.

That beach is a long ways away and a long time ago, but somewhere on it is a stone that I held in my hand and could tell apart from all the others. I think about how people are returned to anonymity, even the ones we once loved. I think that can’t all be a bad thing. Maybe you’re not meant to fret over things of great meaning and weight. If you avert your gaze and lose it just like that, perhaps it’s just like that stone, returning as it has to into the anonymity of a great wide world.