Notes on Invisible Strings

"Your eyes meet, and suddenly the years melt away and you are both kids again. Maybe your hair is a different color, and maybe, they have grown taller than you, but the eyes remain the same."

An invisible string implies a subconscious tie to someone, who will ricochet back to you, like a recurring character in a television show or an answered echo bouncing toward you. You never know how long the string spans or when it will snap back, bringing you together with someone you may have never expected. You will never know who could become the most important person in your life. You might not have even met the person who, a year from now, you will spend every day with, and wonder “Where were you my whole life?”

When I first visited New York City when I was eight years old, I don’t think my young brain could process much beyond the fact that New York City was busy, full of color, and it’s where people went to make their dreams come true. Something in my eight-year-old self knew that New York City was the place. She could sense the magic at her fingertips. She couldn’t express why, how, or what about New York City made her come to this conclusion, but she just knew. She could hear the city calling her name through the cold, January snowfall. My heart has held onto this intuition, and I can feel my heart beating stronger now that I have trusted myself to take this leap. I feel like I have been holding a key in the palm of my hand for years and now here I am, facing the matching door. I found an invisible string of my own.

Moving to New York City has stirred countless emotions in me, as any big move and life change does. I took this leap with two of my closest childhood friends, so naturally, I have been thinking about how my childhood friendships have impacted my life. Years of shared experiences tie you to a person with an almost unbreakable knot. You cannot always separate who your friends were as kids and who they have become. More accurately, you do not always want to accept that your childhood friends have changed, because that would mean the time had passed; and slipped through your fingers like sand. Your heart doesn’t want to let go.

Evolution is an inevitable part of life. People change and will continue to change until the end of time. Not always for good or bad, but rather, people become who they are, no matter what. We are all at once the child who loved to frolic in the garden and daydream, and the adult who is trying their hardest to make those dreams a reality. Just remember, this is everyone’s first time living.

The world works in mysterious ways. There will always be people who pass by for a short moment in time and then leave as if they were never there. There will also be people who enter your life and never leave, and people who you thought would be lost forever but eventually find their way back to you. Your eyes meet, and suddenly the years melt away and you are both kids again. Maybe your hair is a different color, and maybe, they have grown taller than you, but the eyes remain the same. You take comfort in knowing that not everything has changed. There remains a sliver of the past. Proof of your existence before the present moment.

Last summer, I had one such moment when I spent two weeks or so in Valéncia, Spain. The Bay Area may be my hometown, but Valéncia is without a doubt, where I grew up. After sixteen years, I reconnected with several friends from my kindergarten and first-grade class. During the in-between years, these friends were just names I would bring up every once in a while; characters in a story who I thought were lost to the passage of time. Oh how wrong I was. We met for an afternoon coffee and we caught up on all the years spent apart. We fell into a rhythm like no time had passed, reminiscing on our early school days and telling each other about our dreams and hopes for the future. For just a brief moment in time, we became kids again. Before we knew it, the sun was setting; time had slipped away from us once again. Time is funny like that.

In just a few short hours, we had unlocked a door I thought would remain shut forever. Did I make a wrong turn somewhere? Did I grab the wrong key? How could I have let this go? I could sense the invisible string between us at that moment, but I didn’t want it to remain invisible anymore. I want to know when the string will shorten again and we will find our way back to each other. I want to see it so I can hold on for dear life. For right now, I can only hold on to the faint knowledge that our eyes could meet again and nothing will have changed, and that there exists an invisible string between us.

I met a girl once, with jet-black hair and a shy kind of curiosity. We became fast friends and told people we were sisters. That seems to be something little kids do. We shared all our secrets. We were open books and unlocked doors to each other. We loved having sleepovers and reading together. “How To Train Your Dragon” was our favorite world to escape to. We also pretended we were fairies during recess. The tire swing was a giant flower that granted us the power to fly. The community garden was our fairy home base. During recess, my elementary school growing up had a rule that once the bell rang, echoing across the playground and in the hallways, ending our thirty minutes of reckless abandon, everyone had to freeze and take a knee so the teachers could corral their students and guide them back to the classroom in a single-file line to practice long division or sit for quiet reading time. As the new girl, I did not know this rule, but the modest girl with jet-black hair ran over to me when the bell rang to give me a heads-up before one of the teachers could get me in trouble. I knew, through one small act of kindness, that I would trust her forever.

My mom made us matching white t-shirts with pink and blue printed butterflies. We wore them to school one day because, of course, we had to keep the sister act up. She has seen every one of my phases and endured all of my celebrity crushes. I have read her most vulnerable writing and she has read mine. Now, as young adults, we are together again, living in New York City as roommates. She is a girl I have known for over fifteen years, and who I will know for the rest of my life. How lucky are we to experience each other stumble and grow in a city full of so much color and life? We know each other backward and forwards and inside and out a million times over. We will always be intertwined; tangled up in each other’s lives like sea shells washing up on shore stuck to slimy green seaweed. I am sure of that now. Even if her bedroom isn’t right next to mine or she isn’t living down the street from me, we will always find our way back to one another, because we have the map etched into our skin and a compass beats in our hearts.

Are we obligated to reinvent our friendships? The friendships we grew up with. The friendships that developed as we did. Should we re-introduce ourselves as the people we have become? Do we owe each other that? I hope so. That’s what unconditional love is, I guess. Not loving someone no matter what, but loving someone while they grow into the person that deep down in your subconscious, you always knew they would become. Maybe you never get to see this person grow into themselves. Maybe one day you will meet for coffee on a warm summer afternoon and spend the last hours of daylight trying to catch up with time.

Some people say children are wiser than the world gives them credit for. I think as kids we have a special kind of intuition. Our emotions are like magic because we have not yet met shame or embarrassment. We know how we feel about certain people but cannot always explain why. Just like how, at eight years old, I knew New York City would fit into my life at some point or another, my young intuition about the girl on the playground all those years ago and my friends in Valéncia was more true than anything I have felt before. Somehow, I could see the invisible string between us.

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