Heart Surgery

You stood there, nervous.
I had received a text earlier that day. "I'm close", you said.
I was nervous. Had not seen  you for years.
"Will you recognize me?" You asked.
"I don't know." I said.
"I could hear the train." You texted.
"I'm late." I replied.
"You are in the station." You said.

I saw you. Standing tall, erect.  Didn't have any trouble recognizing you.
Then you disappeared.
I found you again.
I made reservation at a French restaurant. We proceeded to walk over there.

You were nervous. I was too.

We sat down. I ordered red wine. You ordered sparkling water. You stopped drinking. No drugs, no drinking, no smoke. Clean living.

All muscles. in great shape. When you smiled i remembered your face all of sudden.

You reached over and grabbed my hand.

"Your heart is beating fast." You commented.

Meeting someone whom you had not seen for a very long time, for the first time was never an easy task.

I had never done this before. To meet someone who I had not seen for so long.

As it turned out. It was easy to get back onto the bike.

Never wrote about this. Never felt the desire to write about it.

I had been rarely on Facebook. Didn't understand why people like iPhones. Didn't quite get texting. Didn't know a lot of things.

Did not know myself.

That bit was harder. To meet someone who had known me then, but didn't know me now. To meet that version of me, who had no idea who I was, due to the unintended long term memory suppression and and the person who was dying to come out. The real me.

That bit was the most difficult. To not know yourself and had the old you, the one you reverted back to when you were barely a teenager, to be the dominant force.

"How could you feel this way?" You asked.

I should have said - "Because I started from the very beginning. The very beginning of everything." I wish I knew what I knew today.

I wish that you could believe me. At the time I felt with my heart. I felt with my soul, I was open, ready to share my thoughts with those who cared to listen. I was daring, and I was honest as if I was only 18. I had a mentality of a 18 year old.

You wouldn't believe me. If I were you, I wouldn't believe that version of me either.

Months passed.

Years passed.

I understood, finally, why we ended the way we did.

I was, quite frankly, not prepared to getting to know this version of me.

You caught me off guard.

You thought I was lying. No one behaved the way I did.

I was wakening. Still heavily sedated. Still felt utterly comfortable to open myself up. I was not sarcastic, I was eager to tell you everything, I was eager to please you, I was fantastically happy to feel desired again. But I also had feelings that were quite easily crushed.

I was anxious, nervous, I felt the valleys and the peaks, like an 18 year old. I wanted the connection. Emotional connection was hard to find. I thought I had that. Silly me, silly 18 year old version of me.

I wish you could meet this version of me now. This was the person you discovered the last time we met but much improved: confident, secure, guarded, emotionally removed, disengaged but charming, likable, more informed about the world.  The way I wanted myself to be.

I couldn't eat that night. You ate a lot more than I did.

The cheese plate was rather good. I always enjoyed cheese plates. I enjoyed dried apricots, fig jam and fromages from France and Spain.

I felt once or twice in my various lives (I'm a cat.)

This was one of those rare moments.

It was a nasty disease that I caught. Took years, months to bounce back. With lots of set backs in between, with lots of therapy sessions, with more mistakes made.

I had a heart surgery and developed an immune system since then.

Surgery was quite a success.

Heart stopped hurting. It no longer feels.