From Texas To North Carolina

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We leave each other with assurances that everything will be okay. We hold on with hope. We’re different, we say. We can make it.

Two people, two cities, two lives.

Then that we becomes a one. Dinners are spent at a table alone. Afternoon runs are run with the companionship of an IPod and night walks home are walked hand-in-hand with an IPhone. Suddenly the “we” we held so strongly to becomes very lonely, until one day we wake up to find that we no longer sleep on one side of the bed and no longer brush our teeth to one side of the sink. Our apartments have become bachelor pads and sorority houses. We each lead a single life, without the single.

It is hard to move to a new city and find an attachment to someone, to something. It is even harder to find that attachment when that someone, that something is hundreds of miles away.

But then that solidarity becomes filled again. Meals are spent at tables with new friends that the other has never met. Nights are spent in bars that the other has never seen. Memories are made that the other can never picture. Inside jokes are laughed at that the other will never understand.

We’ll see each other soon, we say. We can make it through. But the days are long. And no matter how short the time may be, it does not help that that time is not now. It does not help that that time will end again. We measure our days in time until we will talk again. We measure our months in time until we will see each other again. Soon, we will be measuring the years in time until this is all over.

But I watch my friends hold on to and then let go of their hope that they were different, that they could make it, that everything would be okay. As they let go, I hold on tighter to that hope that we’re different, that we can make it, that everything will be okay.

But what if we’re wrong? What if we’re not so different after all? What if our past can no longer support our present? What if our future four months ago does not look like our future today?

What if everything won’t be okay?