I used the same words as before, relied on the same silly excuses, and stuck to the same topics of conversation that I used a couple of years ago when I was younger and reckless. As usual, I blushed in our dialogue, and felt embarrassed; for some reason, I always feel shy about using the harsh words I normally use in everyday speech with you. Why, I don’t know, just as I don’t know why this hasn’t changed over the years.

We have long been living separate lives far apart, but a thread of something pure and untainted has remained between us over time. I don’t feel grown-up and tired when I talk to you; it’s as if I’m slipping back into the summer of ’22, and as if my worries and cares are gone again. But now, reflecting on our conversation, my head is filled with different questions. Why do I act like a kid when we talk? What do you think of me now? If/when we meet, will we connect the same way as before? Was our connection so easy for me because I simply didn’t know myself or the world? Will I look at you with different eyes after all I’ve gone through? Or maybe everything has stayed the same, and we can easily chat about our past and future again? How will you react to my changes and worldview? How have you changed, what’s going on in your thoughts, what do you feel as you enter a new stage in your life, and what do you think about the life path I’ve chosen?

What I fear most is that we will meet and you will see me as an adult, beautiful and healthy, a successful young woman who has achieved her goals and set new ones, and you will realize that all this cost me a broken heart. Broken not just from your absence, but also from the absence of family, from total and consuming loneliness in a foreign country, from strange people who have spit on my soul, from endless burnouts. I’m afraid that if you see this, then it will become an undeniable fact that I will have to come to terms with. And then the real question arises: was it all worth it?

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