Thursday was my birthday. For the first time in 4 years I saw Kim. She hung out with a bunch of us as we did a birthday / I like hanging out with all of you people kind of thing.

And.

Today I was cleaning my apartment, seriously cleaning it, all the rooms, the closets, everything. And I stumbled on this stack of notes I've kept that Kim had written that I honestly had forgotten I had in this apartment. I pulled them out and scanned through them.

It's like another world, another time, another person that she wrote to. I can't... all that time, that year, year and a half couldn't have happened. It doesn't feel like that was something we went through together.

It was ten years ago. A whole damn decade. It's... I don't know.

How do you put down that at one point there was this girl and she was your world. There was this girl who all you wanted to do was make happy. How do you put down that there was a time when you kissed her stomach and felt her breath catch and when you saw her cry and when you sat alone with her in the car and it was quiet but now there is nothing.

Nothing but time and years and years and she's been married now, is going through a divorce, she is a different person, I am a different person, how all this time that goes by and I was a jack ass, a lot of the time, but I'm a good person basically, deep in me I'm not half bad, and part of that is because of this girl who I don't know anymore and who doesn't know me but who I held hands with once in darken theaters, who I talked about the future with, who made me cry and broke my heart and touched me hesitantly under covers but

life, lives diverge and I picked her up and drove her and talking to her was easy but I didn't know anyone she was talking about and she's never pet my dog.

And in ten years will this be how it is with Kelly, if I ever find it in myself to talk to her again?

And in fifteen years, what? Twenty, what?

My grandparents have been married... 66 years, I think, and that's incredible to me. My parents have been married 34. That's incredible.

And here I am, driving around the first girl I loved but who I don't know, and then randomly, the next night, I'm on a kind of date with someone I don't know.

But I think... there's always a start, there's always a first awkward date. But at some point that first awkward date turns into the first last date, right? That at some point all these loves, all these women in my past, they turn into ghosts, muses, spirits made of fogs that float through everything in my life, who have made me who I am, who have made me not-so-bad and who have made me the one that final girl falls for.

So now what? Now what.

Another kind of second date? Another ride in the car with Kim? Another ignored text message from Kelly? Another cute waitress I don't give my number to? Another string of text messages from Jessica that make me want to say my god, why can't you be anyone else so I can take you out on a date?