Somehow You Take Me Back To 18 Every Time

It’s weird how some things can take you back to another life. One where you were younger and full of different dreams. That piece of nostalgia bringing brilliance can be in a form of a song, a place or even a food. For me, it’s you. It’s always been you that can transport me back to a place and time where things were less complicated and more about figuring out who we were.

To me, you’ll always be 20 and crazy which means when I see you I feel temporarily 18 again. I go back to seeing you for the first time and how you danced away with my heart the second our eyes met. It reminds me of drunken nights, singing country songs as loud as we could while trying to fight the magnetic pull that brought us together in the first place. Because at that age, it was so much easier than being friends with benefits than admitting that maybe at this age, we might have found our person.

But finding your person young is terrifying. Our world is built on a fear of missing out and that feeling was too strong and too hard to fight for us to stay where we were and realize that we were happy.

So, seeing you again when we’re almost in our 30s, it makes my heart yearn for a time when things were different. It makes me miss when you’d twirl me around the dance floor and I’d stare into your eyes that reflected emotions I was too young to make sense of.

When you touched my hand, the feelings rushed immediately back and when you asked me to dance, yes was falling out of my mouth before my brain could connect with the words. No one in that room would know it, but we were swaying, and my heart was trying to remind itself not to fall for you again. It’s hard to now wonder if you ever miss me as much as I miss you.

At some point, we lost touch, and I guess in the moment we didn’t realize that we lost so much. Our ending wasn’t fiery or explosive or something to write home about, it was just an ending. It was two kids going out into the world, searching for the adults inside of us that we were meant to be. That meant that our path that we were walking together somewhere along the line started to divert and standing here with you today I couldn’t tell you the reasons why.

Having your arms wrapped around me makes me feel safe. It reminds me of the times, late at night, I’d lay in your arms and we’d laugh about something stupid. It made me feel like I was coming home again because for such a long time I built my home in you. Everything that didn’t make sense about me back then made sense when I was with you.

Here’s the really cruel thing about life, even though those feelings are there, we’re not meant to be. We’re meant to live our lives without each other with momentary glimpses of seeing who we were back then and how we’re so different now. I never believed life and love was unfair, but I look at you from across the room and know that all we’re ever going to be in is brief flashes in each other’s lives. And that seems really unfair to me.

When I see you, I see my 20-year-old boy who now somehow is a man. A man with more wrinkles and smile lines than he had before but still looks timeless. A man who reminds me that there are people in this world who can make you feel a whole hell of a lot but not be the one you end up with. A man who embodies love and pain all in one almost perfect looking human being.

Love isn’t always meant to be but I’ll let myself go back to 18 every time with you because there was no better feeling than that.