It turns out that this whole time we’re just lost in each other, while the homes where we’re supposed to be are just around the corner waiting for us.
The homes where the doors are in the shapes of our outlines and the tables are set with our favorite colors. Your true home with vinyl records and cool people music, pictures on the walls are blurred and black and white. Mine has a home theater and is painted with my favorite colors that I forgot I liked.
Maybe it’s not me that you wanted in the first place, maybe it was her. Maybe the same goes for me. But the notion of being in love with our best friends gets us mixed up about which best friend.
Turns out we’re just practicing for the true best friend of our lives. I don’t know how long yours has been waiting for you but mine has been waiting 10 years for me to come home. We’re pieces of puzzles switched in the wrong frames, now you’re where you’re supposed to be and so am I. In the following years, I imagine you going to Barcelona to watch football and I’ll go to Vietnam to recreate a scene from that one Wong Kar Wai film. I was stuck in a world that didn’t have room for me, and you were stuck in a world that begs for your attention while you’re busy living your life. Now we fit, instead of stuck.
You finally got your private life, your anchor that doesn’t mind being underwater, and I finally always have a seat reserved for me at the theaters. You found the one who speaks your language and I’ve found mine. We speak in book nerd vocabularies that sounds AI-written, therapy speak, and internet slang. I finally learned not to run away and maybe you finally learn to prioritize the one you actually want. I get a pair of listening and validating ears, and maybe you get a lifetime supply of easy adolescent fun like in college.
In the end, we find what we need in the right people, instead of nagging each other for it. We find places where we truly belong without all the mental gymnastics. I finally get to be taken care of like a princess, and you finally get to be the prince who saves the day. No one needs to beg for anything. We’re both in a place where everything is nice and warm.
How lucky we are to fall in love with our best friends twice in a lifetime. Lucky enough for it to happen once, and happen again with the ones who fit our lives like a glove.
I keep thinking about how funny it looks, I get the big guy that makes me feel safe while you get the picture-perfect girl you can dress up together with. I get to talk about grief and you get to talk about homes haunted with anger, and we actually have people who understand us instead of getting lost in translation. You get to experience wanting a girl to meet your parents and I get to experience a guy wanting me to meet his parents. You get to envision a future with someone, and I get to have someone who asks how my mom is doing while picking me up for movies.
However hard it was, for all the weight I lost out of heartbreak, every night I spent wanting to die, I’m glad it all happened. Thank you for showing me what I need, and leading me to be where I’m supposed to be. Just like how I’m just an endeavor on your way to find her, turns out I was on my way to find him too.
