Many winters ago, I met a former lover. Years had passed since we last saw each other—time enough for life to press its weight upon us, to make strangers of familiar souls. We met as people changed by distance, softened by separate lives.
I remember the cold air, the quiet hum of the car, the faded photographs I still carried in my mind. I was in the prime of my career then—busy, surrounded, always somewhere between arrivals and departures. There was someone in my life, and yet, I often felt untouched. Young and restless, but composed, as though waiting for life to fully begin.
He asked me, “Are you genuinely happy?”
I think I said yes. It felt like the right answer. Or maybe it was the easy one.
We drove for a while, the city unfamiliar and yet somehow tender in the dark. I dropped him off at his hotel. We never saw each other again.
Now, years later, lying in a bed I couldn’t have imagined then, the question returns. Not as an echo, but as a presence.
Not always. But I’ve known happiness—briefly, fiercely. I’ve held it like breath, lost it like a dream. It has come and gone enough to leave behind a longing. Enough to teach me that even a glimpse is worth remembering.
And so I wait for it again—not with desperation, but with hope. Because to yearn is to remember what is possible. And maybe that’s its own kind of happiness.
