Branching Pathways

I’ve been thinking a lot about the past, specifically about the dreaded question of “What if?”

Recently, while at work, So-youn’s email address popped up in my gmail chat list. Knowing that So-youn herself couldn’t have signed on to her email account, my brain immediately processed that someone was posing as her.

me: hello... who is this? I freaked out a little just now...
so-youn: im sorry i freaked out and signed out. this is ***. it says she is on invisible. i didnt mean to confuse anyone. im not even reading her email. i dont know why i logged in.
me: well, I'm not confused...but just surprised. Hello, ***.

Long story very short, ***is very cool and we relate to each other on several tangible (ie. she has my glasses and phone) and intangible (ie. she wants to save the world and she has played with both ends of the academic spectrum) points. She’s loads smarter than anyone I know, and it is all I can do to keep up with her dizzying intellect at times, and I sometimes have to look up words she uses during our internet conversations. Anyway, so I’ve been thinking a lot about So-youn the last couple days, primarily because of my new friendship with ***. I looked back at all our old email correspondences and chat logs on gmail yesterday and the day before. She certainly left a mark on me. She once invited me to her birthday party, and I didn’t go. Part of the reason was that I was really busy with whatever schoolwork I wasn’t doing at the time. The main reason, however, was that I feared feeling awkward meeting people that I didn’t know. Ridiculous, right? Not going to her birthday party is one of my great regrets. So-youn taught me by example the value in reaching out to those around you. She loathed at the term “networking” but regardless of that, she was really good at it. Going to that party of hers was her attempt at connecting her friends together; she said so herself. That was another thing she was good at: finding two people and seeing a thread that would connect them. That is why I think *** and me finding each other through seemingly random happenstance is yet another notch in So-youn’s belt. Even from the next life, she is able to connect people together. It boggles my mind. Wherever she is, I know So-youn is smiling.

I have been having a lot of those “what if” moments recently. Not only with all the potential time I could have spent or moments I could have shared with So-youn, but also in regards to a certain one of my friends who hasn’t yet graduated from college after 7 years. We used to be really close. The closest two platonic friends could be. And then the barrier broke, and we found ourselves infatuated with one another at the most wrong of times. Our friendship as it was ended shortly after that. We can’t go back to how things used to be. Because of what she said, what I said, what we didn’t say, or we did or didn’t do. To skip ahead to the now part of the story, she’s been at junior college for 7 years, since graduating high school. That’s a long time. I would understand if she had real hindrances to entering a university, but she doesn’t. The only thing keeping her back is herself. I have wondered if the end of our relationship, as it was 5 years ago, could be the cause of her not being able to extricate herself from community college. She had maybe 3 positive people in her life going to school with her when I was a city college student, and when we all left to four-year universities, she was left with people who could care less about succeeding in the world. I am not intending this to sound like I am high and mighty at the top of my ivory tower, and that the only success one can have is academic and monetary success. If these people showed the slightest bit of talent in any un-academic field, I would take back my statement, but other than the token wannabe musician, her friends are wasting their lives thinking that figuring out what bling to wear to class is more important than what class to actually take. If I had been there for her back then, if I had perhaps dated her like she wanted, could things have been different? Would we have worked out? Obviously no one can say for certain. I know she has dreams and she wants to do something of merit in the world, but she’s taken and dropped the same math class for the last 4 years, and that one math class is what is keeping her from moving on. What if I had been there? Could I have helped her? Would she even have asked me for help? Again, who is to say?

Ending with a haiku.
Like a cat, it stares.
It’s there, wherever you are.
Then now, then later.