Who are you?

You sat across from me last night and all I could think was - and who are you?

Hard to believe we were together for 16 years and now we're total strangers again. I know we've been apart for a long time - my choice and I really wouldn't change it, even now.

But I looked at you when you walked in and I thought, who are you? And who am I? And what happened to those two people who fell in love all those years ago? Where did they go?

And if we met today, being the people we are now, would we have fallen in love? How did we get here?

I looked at you and I saw that you haven't changed in the past - god, has it really been? - more than seven years. I don't think that's who you were when we met. That angry, bitter, negative person. Did I do that to you? Turn you into that?

And it made me sad that all those years mean nothing now. That we can only sit across the table from each other, being uncomfortable, knowing there was a history there but not knowing what that means now.

I wish sometimes that I could have let you be a part of my life. To not lose all those years together because there were good things in there, under all the bad. To hang on to something, some vestige of a relationship. To not lose all of that time.

I wish I could invite you back into my life now. But listening to you last night, I know that's not possible because, well, you're the same person you were when I left. And I can't invite that person back into my life. I just can't. Even if I kept you on the edge of things, I don't think you would stay there. And the old habits would come crashing back. And I can't do that again.

But I wondered who you are now. How you have changed, if you have changed. Did you wonder that as you sat across the table from me? Did you recognize me? Or did you wonder the same thing - who are you?

And our history laid on the table between us, just staring at us. Our friends were kind enough to ignore that history and just treat us as individuals, not like the couple we were. I appreciated that. I don't know if you did. 

I wish I could be a bigger person and say, hey, let's have dinner, grab coffee, whatever, and just catch up. But the things you said last night made me know that that is never going to happen. Because ironically, I know exactly who you are. 

And, more importantly, I know who I am.