agaysianvagabond:

Word gets around fast when you’re back in town. People calling and emailing wanting to catch up. Most of them have been family members and old friends that I haven’t seen in awhile. However the other day I received a facebook message from a guy that I used to mess around with during my breaks from university. He had heard through mutual friends that I had returned home. We never dated, or at least I never saw it as that. After a few polite messages, I accepted his friend request and immediately started stalking his page. He still looked the same, but slightly older and a few more pounds around the waist.

He asked if I wanted to meet up for drinks. I agreed, mainly because I was bored and also I was curious about what he had been up to these last few years. We met at a bar and had a few drinks, making small talk, reminiscing about the past, while trying our best at avoiding the awkward present. I learned that he had gotten married 4 years ago and was recently divorced. He’s Cambodian American and to appease his traditional Buddhist family, he married a girl. He has a 2 year old daughter. The marriage was a sham to begin with, so he expected that it would eventually end in divorce. Even still he was disappointed that he was not able to fulfill his duties as a husband and as a son. He still hasn’t come out to his family and he suspects that his ex-wife knows, but they never talked about it. When he spoke, I could feel the loneliness and sadness in his voice. I didn’t know what to say to him, so I just squeezed his hand under the table and made him pay for the drinks as a punishment for not inviting me to his wedding.

The next morning as he was getting ready for work, I asked him why he had contacted me. He paused half way into putting on his sweater, his head in-between two layers of navy blue merino wool, and replied, “because of all the what ifs”. He didn’t elaborate and I didn’t ask for more. We were foolish and naive when we first met. Now we’re just brief moments in each other’s past. We didn’t owe each other any sort of explanation or defense about our life choices. It was and it is.

I hope our paths will cross again someday.