What Happens When Someone Never Gets Over You

When certain lines intersect in life, you don’t undo that collision. You can move away from it. You can move halfway around the world. But there you are, still tethered to something you can’t quite explain.

At first you feel crazy. It has been years. Why am I thinking about them. Why do they show up in my dreams like something unfinished. Surely this can’t mean anything.

And for a long time, it doesn’t.

Years pass. You stop giving it weight. It becomes a phase. A fling that lasted too long. Something you tuck into a version of yourself you don’t visit often. You describe it casually. Like going from a rusty Honda Civic to an Aston Martin. You say it as a joke, but it did change something. It shifted your sense of what was possible.

And then it happens.