In my mind, we met at a social soirée. The penthouse party raging on 29th Avenue and Hudson, where all the first year students gathered. The night was still young, and the rage has yet reached its peak. In the city that never sleeps, I knew New York was filled with endless opportunities, social gatherings, but only one of you. At this soirée, dim lights set the mood, bits and pieces of conversation danced in the air, and we'd lock eyes from across the room.
In my imagination, I'd agonize and ponder over your face and that hint of a smile on your lips all night long while overconsuming whiskey cokes until I can finally muster up my liquor courage to approach you with a stupid grin on my face. Unbeknownst and uncaring of my responsibilities, I wouldn't think twice about anything that night. There would have been no one there to judge my actions, no one there to tell me I am responsible for more than myself, and no one there to prevent me from approaching you. I would know nothing of the word responsibility, other than the root of that word "to respond". And the only thing I knew I would respond to in that moment was your beckoning gaze from across the room.
In my daydream, it didn't matter what happened next, it didn't matter if we ended up leaving together, or if we went our separate ways as the night grew old. What mattered was what happened in the heat of the moment, what mattered was the absolute freedom and eradication of obligations, and what mattered was the intensity of our feelings melting together to form one whole night of memories. But that wasn't the reality, wasn't it?
The reality is brutal. Harsh. And it burdens us with expectations and goals. Our ambition aside, our egos aside, our own feelings aside, it has nothing to do with what we want or even need. But rather, it is the infeasibility of us seeking solace in each others' arms as we lay together in bed because we worry when our parents would be home, it is the constant fear of being a little too careless sending us sprinting into hideouts to avoid being caught, it is the constant anxiety that none of us could escape.
It is being with the right person, at the wrong time.
–– the things we could never have.
