It was a sunny afternoon, I was bored out of my mind, and the air from the electric fan was prickling my skin. I was sitting on a chair too low for me to shift my weight comfortably. We were just waiting for the time to pass so that we could clock out.
However, it was only one o'clock in the afternoon, so there was still plenty of time to kill. Usually, whenever there was a lull at work, I would pull out my ipad and watch movies. But at that time, there was no internet connection, which was a total buzzkill.
While I accepted the fact that I can't use my ipad, I was keen on opening my kindle to read, but unfortunately, I forgot to put it in my bag. Resigned to the fact that I can't do something worthwhile to kill time, I finally decided to just open my phone.
Moments later, I found myself doomscrolling through my socials when I came across a name - a name I used to know from forever ago. She made a comment about something, and looking at her name transported me back to a time when life felt a little easier, when our problems seemed a little bit silly compared to what we have now.
The thing that made me open up my blog again and write about this is that I don’t have someone to tell this to. I also don’t want to be a creep, someone who’s too nostalgic for her own good.
It was a hazy day, but I don't remember what time it was or what day of the week it was. All I saw was a girl sitting in a room, all disheveled, hair all over the place, a uniform that hadn't been ironed for God knows how long, dirty nails, and she smelled a bit weird, too. I don't remember her having friends she hung out with - though I could be wrong because I was too preoccupied with my life then, too. At this point, this only exists in my memory.
She's a nice girl, though I can hardly claim to know her. I'm just someone who happened to notice her - a fly on the wall in that particular moment in time. Yet there's one memory of her that has stayed with me all these years. She was crying. Around her, the other girls whispered and gossiped. As I remember it, she had been accused of something she didn't do, though time has blurred the details. I don't even know if the matter was ever resolved.
High school was strange like that. Everyone had to navigate a certain social hierarchy, and I was a willing participant, though more as a background character than anything else.
I'm generally careful about looking at people's profiles online, but curiosity got the better of me, so I clicked her name. And what do you know? She's doing really well for herself. She doesn't look like the person I remember from high school at all. Not because she's become someone different, but because she seems to have grown into herself. She bloomed into someone I think her younger self would be proud of.
And I found myself genuinely happy for her. What's funny is that all of this exists entirely on my side of the story. It's a single frame from someone else's life, pulled from memory, placed under a magnifying glass, and examined years later. For her, it may have been a painful day she eventually forgot, but for me, it became something worth writing about.
The image of her sitting on a chair, crying, is burned into my memory, frozen in time, but in reality, time did not stop there. It kept unfolding; days became weeks, weeks became months, and months became years. And somewhere along the way, she kept growing. She kept becoming. While I remembered a single frame, her life kept moving beyond it.
Of course, she has no idea I carry this memory of her. I doubt she ever will. After all, these are only my random musings on a very boring afternoon with no internet or a book, nothing to entertain me but this little memory I have of her, triggered by peeking through her profile.
Knowing what I know now, it made me realize that nothing is really set in stone. What you are now does not always define your future because none of us is a finished story.
