Jaliah

If you ever see me again, please pretend you never knew me.

I saw M today. On the N train of all places. She was sitting across from me and I saw her before she saw me so I had about four seconds to decide what to do. I looked at my phone. She saw me anyway.

She said my name the way people from home say it. The full version, not the one I go by here. She was so happy to see me. She asked about my mother and I said she's fine. She asked if I was still in school and I said no. She asked what I was doing now and I said I work in marketing which is true but not the answer she was looking for. She wanted to know if I was married. I said no. She made a face like she was trying not to make a face.

M is not a bad person. She is one of the nicest people I grew up with. She taught me how to braid hair and she cried when I left for college. I don't have anything against her. But talking to her made me feel like I was standing in my mother's kitchen again, seventeen and suffocating, trying to figure out how to want the things I was supposed to want.

I got off two stops early just to end the conversation. I told her it was my stop and she hugged me and said we should get coffee and I said definitely but I hope she knew I didn't mean it.

The walk home was long. I kept thinking about what she's going to tell people. She saw me, I'm in New York, I'm not married, I work in marketing. They'll feel sorry for me. My mother will call. She'll ask if I'm eating. She won't ask about the rest of my life because she's learned not to.

I'm not unhappy. I want to say that. I have a job I like and an apartment with a window that gets good light and friends who know me as I actually am. I go to the movies alone on Tuesdays and I cook dinner for one and none of this is sad to me. But M looked at me the way you'd look at someone who got lost, and for about twenty minutes on the walk home I saw my life through her eyes and it looked empty. It's not empty. It's just mine and it doesn't look like what she expected.

I keep thinking about what I would say to her if I could be fully honest. I think I would say something like, if you see me again, please pretend you never knew me. Not because I don't care about you but because every time someone from home sees me they measure the distance between who I was supposed to become and who I became and I can feel the measurement happening and it makes me want to disappear.

I don't think she'd understand that. She's still in the kitchen. She doesn't know there's a window.

I ordered Thai food when I got home. I watched something on my laptop. It was a fine night.