I Saw a Stranger on the Street Today
Dear stranger, did you ever really mean the world to me?
Editor-in-chief's note: This piece contains mentions of self-harm and explicit descriptions of suicide.
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I saw a stranger on the street today.
I was walking down the street with a friend, and she was headed the other way.
We turned to look at each other as we walked by, and we gave blank, empty glances—just as one would when side-eyeing peculiar strangers. I walked right past her like she was no one to me, because she was.
You looked different from when I last saw you. Your hair—is it dirty blonde, or more of a reddish tone? I didn’t get a good look. It’s curled, now, too; I like it a lot. It’s different from the pixie-cut faded green you sported six months ago.
I looked different, too. My hair—almost the same, but cut well. Pinker and sharper, too: I had it re-dyed over the summer.
You still wear the same flannels. I like them; they’re quite colorful. My outfits are a bit different from what I wore last time we met. New semester, new Ellie. I wonder how much of you is the same, and how much of you is new? (How different is the real you, here and now, from the version of you I still hold in my heart?)
Do you still have that plastic rose I gave you back in April? (Or did you throw it away?) Do you still listen to the same songs we listened to together? (Or did you scrub them from your playlists already?)
We both turned around for a second. And we both kept walking.
I thought about going up to her—talking to her, asking if I could get to know her all over again—then I threw that thought away.
I called a stranger on the phone today.
I asked her how my brother was doing—was he well?
What have you been doing lately? (Anything exciting; anything new?)
Just taking care of home, as always, she said. (Sometimes—most times—it feels like preserving that idea of “home” mattered to you more than I did.)
We talked pleasantries. We talked about the usual stuff: how school was going, whatever exciting thing I had planned for the week, when I would come home again. (Never.)
Sometimes that’s the last thing we talk about before I hang up, bitter and frustrated. Maybe she’ll understand one day. (She probably says the same thing about me.) The calls, though infrequent, are pleasant. At times I miss her, the stranger on the phone.
I said bye to her. And I hung up.
I thought about going back home—making amends, rebuilding my past—then I threw that thought away.
I said happy birthday to a stranger today.
I remember when we were kids. He was my best friend; my aide-de-camp. Sometimes, I wish he still was.
We first met when I noticed the jade-green novel you had on your desk in class. (Angie Sage’s “Flyte.” I loved the first book; you lent the sequel for me to read. We talked about Septimus Heap every recess for the rest of that week.)
I loved talking about stories with you; talking about writing stories with you; regaling one another with the fantasy worlds we would make up for each other all to get out of dealing with our real lives in the real world. It was easier that way. I still recall that one afternoon we spent on the bed of your dad’s pickup truck. We wrote stories outside, laughing, having fun, until it turned dark.
I wish I hadn’t thrown away the board game we designed together. It was made of cardboard, and it wasn’t really that fun to play, but it was a memory I will never get back.
Over the next two years, as our group of misfits grew and grew, we slowly drifted apart. I wish we stayed in touch, and I wish you were still my best friend.
He’s different now, and so am I. It’s startling to see how much time has passed, and how much has changed. (It feels like just yesterday when our teachers said we were basically twins, even though your skin was white and mine was brown.)
We still text sometimes, but we don’t really get far into conversation. We don’t know what to say to each other anymore, I think. We’re different now.
I thought about sending him another text—giving him a call, telling him about the kinds of stories I write now—then I threw that thought away.
I said goodbye to a stranger today.
I didn’t say it before. I wish I did. It’s been two years now, and I never will get to. (Four years, actually. I can’t believe it’s been so long.)
I was thinking about the scars on my hand, and then I thought about hers.
I thought about her lying in that bathtub; how alone she must have felt; how scared she must have been; how hard she must have gripped the knife in her hand; how much she must have been hurting.
I don’t know how to honor her memory. I didn’t even know her anymore. She was one of my closest friends as a kid, the stranger that exists now only in memory. But I still remember the times we hung out at the park and the playground and the many places that headlined our quaint little California town.
Do you remember when we were kids, and we called you Ms. Secret Service Agent? You were quiet, formidable—quite terrifying to behold, actually. (But there was a sweet side to you that I loved, and I know everyone else did too.) You always wore these black aviators and loved playing along to your would-be profession.
She hated my guts when we first met, and I hated hers, too. She was insufferable to me, as I was to her. But in the end, she was the one who sat next to me when we and our friends huddled in the space under the playground together.
(I’m not the center of this story, just one of the many people left behind.)
(I hope you’re in a better place now.)
(I will believe you are.)
(I know you are.)
(You are.)
I told her best friend (a fellow survivor of our would-be band of brothers) I’m sorry this happened when it happened, one of the many dozens of people who must have sent that same exact message. Then I moved on with my life.
I thought about lighting a candle for her—saying hi to her best friend, doing anything I could to lie to myself that she went to sleep, for the last time, in peace—then I threw that thought away.
I said I love you to a stranger today.
I didn’t say it to her face. I wonder if, on the other side of it all—all the way on the other side of a broken city overflowing with broken hearts and broken dreams—she says it to me, too.
She stumbled back into my life just as I gave up on the idea. You don’t know how much that meant to me; how much you giving me the time of day, whatever that looks like, means to me.
That lovely little blue-haired girl that always made my day, oh what I would give to see you smile again. (I hear your laughs, in my head, when we crack jokes together. I see the life in your eyes, in my head, when we talk about all your favorite things.)
We text sometimes, once every couple of days, I and the stranger who used to mean everything to me. We talk about H.P. Lovecraft, and we talk about the dark and macabre corners of a world that paints over its ugly parts, and we talk about the philosophy of life. We talk about the people we used to be, and we talk about the people we are now. (You’re still the same person you used to be, even if you’re different now.)
Each time we talk, I try to piece together, glue back together, the story that we used to share. I hope you’re doing it with me, too.
But I don’t know what I am to you, anymore. That’s okay, I think. That’s okay with me.
We’re getting to know each other all over again. It’s nice, even if it’s different now. Whether I will ever mean everything to you again, whether I will ever get to hold your hand again—you will always make my day. (That’s what matters most to me, really.)
I thought about telling her how I really felt—telling her that I wanted to be everything to her all over again, telling her that I would cross that broken city that separates us just to see her again—then I threw that thought away.
The strangers I don’t know anymore, they still take up space in the story of me. Somewhere in there, the little things that made us click in the first place are the glue that keeps me together.
I don’t see them in me, anymore, nor me in them. Their own stories, their own lives; they all exist to me now—the people they were, the people I knew, the people I want them to be—only in memory. I used to hold parts of them close to me, letting my trajectory across the vastness of the cosmos shift around them as the orbits of their story pull against me in my passing. But now, I can barely remember what it’s like to be the kind of person that fits into their lives, nice and neat, as a puzzle piece would. (Eventually, my orbit with another always drifts apart; I continue on, and they do, too. We hurtle through space away from one another as though we had never met in the first place, the strangers I don’t know anymore.)
At times, I’m overcome with the burning desire to pull their orbit back to me. I want to be the kind of person that fits into their lives again; when I’m crying in the corner of my room, and the best I can do is kick and scream, and the world feels all too big for me, I long to be next to the strangers that could have been my entire world. But there’s a reason we’re strangers, now. A reason that when I look into their eyes, I don’t see anything but distance. A reason why our orbits drifted apart.
We just don’t fit together, nice and neat, anymore. (Maybe we never did.)
Dear stranger, did you ever really mean the world to me? Or were you just another apparition in my life, just another frequency I tuned into on life’s staticky radio to keep the cold and uncaring void from consuming me? The frequency of each stranger that could have been my entire world always goes dark. And no matter how hard I look, I will never find it again. (See: Radio Silence, another column from “An Ellie For Your Thoughts.”)
I saw a stranger in the mirror today.
I looked at her, but she didn’t look back.
Well, in the most shallow way, she did—she stared at my eyes, her echoing gaze fixed to the shifting of mine, as I stared at hers. Try as I might, I couldn’t find the light in her eyes that used to make my day.
Who are you to me, oh stranger in the mirror? I see you every day when I wake up, and I see you every day when I go to sleep. (I see you in the reflection of the puddle that forms on the street after a rainy day, in the reflection of all the windows as I pass by nameless buildings on my way to campus, in the reflection of my laptop as I write this column.)
I used to know who you are. I used to know what you liked, and what you hated, and what made you tick.
I used to know why you did the things you did.
I used to know everything about you.
But you’re different now. (Why are you different now? Why did you never tell me what went wrong and changed you so much from the person I used to know?) You’re different from that hopeful little girl who stepped foot on campus for the first time, ready for a new beginning. You’re different from that bright-eyed little girl who wanted to take the world by storm. You’re different from that happy little girl who just needed a friend.
She stared back at me as I watched her in the mirror, and I don’t know who she is anymore. And it scares me. It scares me so much that I might never be able to get to know her ever again.
I want to get to know her again—I really, really want to. But where do I even start? How do I get to know a stranger who doesn’t even know herself?
I told her, I love you; I told her, I understand you. She said it back as I spoke the words aloud—but cold, empty, hollow.
I thought about trying to understand why she’s different now—sitting her down and making her tell me all of the things that went wrong; trying to rekindle that light in her eyes that used to make my day—then I threw that thought away.
The strangers I don’t know anymore, I want to get to know them all over again. I want to look at them, and I want them to look at me, with love and life and light. I want us to cross paths once more and let our orbits pull us in the direction of one another. I want them to mean everything to me—I want to mean everything to them—all over again.
Maybe they will, and maybe I will, if I tried hard enough; if we tried hard enough. Maybe we might have made it happen; maybe, in some far off distant future when all the stars have burned to dust and all that’s left is the cold and dark embrace of the forever, we might have found a way.
But I throw all the thoughts and what ifs away.
All because I saw a stranger on the street today.