Happy to see you found your way back to something you love. Here’s to making new memories and seeing where they lead you!
It stops me, right where I am, and cuts through my anger to something more fragile. The hope, maybe, that I can move on from this. I read the note over again, knowing that she means well, but it puts a lump in my throat just the same because even if I know this one thing about myself—that I like to take pictures—what good is it if it’s the only thing? And what good are pictures, even, if I can’t remember the story behind them?
They’re useless.
Pictures aren’t going to bring my memories back. They’re not going to give me my life back either. Those things are gone, and the relationships that were part of them are gone too. They stayed the same, and I changed, and now I don’t fit anymore. I look around my room that still doesn’t feel like it belongs to me, with its decorations I don’t remember choosing, and photos I never smiled for, of events I’ve never attended. Awards I’ve never won. The old me did all those things. And maybe I need to let them go.
I look up at the chalkboard wall in front of me, full to the edges with jokes and memories that I am no longer a part of. I never had Paige finish going through them with me, but that doesn’t matter now. I open the drawer and find a chalkboard eraser that looks like it’s never been used, and then I start in one corner. Memories that belong to me but don’t disappear in seconds beneath the wide arc of the eraser. There are years’ worth of moments that made up my life, and who I was—not just to my friends and family, but to myself. I wipe them away, one by one, and by the time I’m finished, the wall is a swirly mess of multicolored chalk dust. My desk is covered in it, and so am I, but when I stand back and look at it, what I feel is a small measure of relief at the destruction. Like I can almost breathe again.
I tuck the picture of me into my back pocket and go downstairs, and tell my mom I need to get some air so I’m going for a walk. She doesn’t say anything about the chalk dust all over me. She just nods like she understands.
I don’t know where I’m going when I step out the door, but I head for the beach, and when I hit the sand I stop for a moment. Take one breath, and then another. The sun hasn’t set yet, but it’s tucked away behind the expanse of gray clouds that have gathered on the horizon. The air is already cooling, and it makes me wish I’d brought a sweater, but it’s too late now. I can’t go back. Just like with everything else in my life. All I can do at this point is keep going forward. So I do. All the way down the beach.
I pass the harbor where boats are coming in, making their way home for the evening, and the Embarcadero, where tourists are starting to do the same. I don’t even feel like I belong here anymore, so I keep walking, head down against the rising wind, putting one foot in front of the other. Moving forward. It’s not until my feet hit the sidewalk of the Carson Bridge that I slow my steps and realize that I haven’t moved forward at all. I’ve just gone backward, back to the place where this all started. Back to the beginning of this, and the end of me.
I stop for a moment to catch my breath. And then I keep going.
The sidewalk rises in front of me with the arc of the bridge, and my steps slow down—not because of the incline, but because of the increasing tightness in my chest, and the knowledge that I’m nearing the exact place where my car went over the bridge. I can see the tire marks on the road. They go across one lane and into the other, and then they disappear at a new section of cement. I check for cars, and when there are none, I follow the tire marks across the lane to the other side.
And then I’m here. In the place where everything changed. Where, moments before the video started rolling, a trucker lost control and crashed into my car, sending Matt and me careening into the water below. I stop. Close my eyes. And though I know it’s not a memory, I see it happening. I see the truck’s headlights in the rearview, and the moment we both felt fear—that fraction of a second that was the dividing line between before and after.
And then I see the impact. The explosion of glass, and the twist of metal before the free fall. The second impact, when we hit the water. The muffled silence that followed. The cold water pouring into the car as we sank. Filling my lungs and slowing my heart.
And then nothing.
That’s what happened here.
I died.
And yet here I am.
I rest my elbows on the rough cement of the railing and lean over it. Look down into the water below. It’s calm. Slick and dark on the surface, giving nothing away. No indication of what happened here. It’s been forgotten already. The memory of it washed away with the ebb and flow of the tides, and carried out to the open ocean to be let go.
I put my head down on my arms, and I cry, finally. I cry for this thing that happened to me, and everything I’ve lost, and the way I’ve tried and failed to find it. I cry for the past that’s disappeared, and the present that doesn’t fit right, and the future I can’t see. But mostly I cry for the utter loneliness I feel in this moment.
The tears trickle down my cheeks and fall, and I let them. I let them all go until I have no more. And then I’m still, staring out at the water and the sky as dusk deepens the sky, and the lights in the harbor begin to blink on. I know I should go home, but I don’t know how to get there from this place no one else inhabits or can even reach.
“Hey,” a voice says, interrupting my thoughts. “Don’t jump, okay? I got lucky the first time. I don’t think we should count on it happening again.”
I wipe at my eyes as I turn to see Walker standing there on the bridge. I look around. “What are you doing here?”
“Walking,” he says simply. “What are you doing here?”
“Same.” I don’t offer an explanation even though I’m standing on the bridge where I almost died, crying.
He takes a step closer. “Do you . . . wanna walk somewhere else? You’re making me kind of nervous up here like this.”
I nod. “Okay.”
So we walk.
We don’t say anything at first. It’s quiet, and I am keenly aware of our steps, and my breathing, and the proximity of his shoulder to mine as we walk. He seems to be giving me space. The opportunity to talk or not, so I try to give him the same. It should feel strange, but it doesn’t, being together like this.
We get to the end of the bridge and turn, head back toward the harbor, and once we’re under the lights of the Embarcadero, he looks at me.
“So, trouble in paradise or existential crisis?”
“Both,” I say without hesitating.
He nods. “Wanna talk about it?”
“No.” I shiver.
“You cold?”
“A little.”
He stops. Takes off his fleece-lined denim jacket and offers it to me. “Here.”