A name, a face from the past - from my other life - or one of them! How can this be? I have buried that life in a box, hermetically sealed, a life that once belonged to someone else. I am a different person now. I exist in another world. I have 'moved on'. How then can this apparition return to haunt me from the life that was someone else's?
He is different too. Older, more stable, more solid, thickset. He has married - settled? Perhaps he has children. He was young and arrogant, disturbing, when I knew him before. Now, I don't know. We are from different worlds and I do not want to go back, to cross the line, to open up old wounds.
No, he was not a lover, not even a friend. He is merely a representative, a reminder, of that other existence, that other life that I lived and wish to live no more. He is simply the youngest son of my contemporaries who were once colleagues, almost friends. Now the friendship is no more because we no longer agree. We have drifted apart. They do not keep in touch; neither do we, but there is no animosity.
It is strange how life has evolved, but worrying to realise that I keep my life in compartments. Maybe we all do. The old life is sealed off to prevent 'contamination', seepage, to guard against negative thoughts, pain and a creeping self-doubt. I am a new woman now, but not without flaws. The makeover is incomplete and the past is a vista I cannot afford to dwell upon. Life must go on. The past is past.
A new morning has broken, but not quite like the first one. But I must press forward into the light lest something more should become broken and be lost in the shadows that threaten to emerge from that box. I must press on... Still, his sudden appearance from those shadows is disturbing.
He is different too. Older, more stable, more solid, thickset. He has married - settled? Perhaps he has children. He was young and arrogant, disturbing, when I knew him before. Now, I don't know. We are from different worlds and I do not want to go back, to cross the line, to open up old wounds.
No, he was not a lover, not even a friend. He is merely a representative, a reminder, of that other existence, that other life that I lived and wish to live no more. He is simply the youngest son of my contemporaries who were once colleagues, almost friends. Now the friendship is no more because we no longer agree. We have drifted apart. They do not keep in touch; neither do we, but there is no animosity.
It is strange how life has evolved, but worrying to realise that I keep my life in compartments. Maybe we all do. The old life is sealed off to prevent 'contamination', seepage, to guard against negative thoughts, pain and a creeping self-doubt. I am a new woman now, but not without flaws. The makeover is incomplete and the past is a vista I cannot afford to dwell upon. Life must go on. The past is past.
A new morning has broken, but not quite like the first one. But I must press forward into the light lest something more should become broken and be lost in the shadows that threaten to emerge from that box. I must press on... Still, his sudden appearance from those shadows is disturbing.
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