I never really got nervous around people my age. It just wasn’t my thing. But then there was this one girl in class I had zero clue how to talk to, so naturally, I just… didn’t.
Somehow, despite my absolute lack of game, you were the one who actually started things. Which I then immediately managed to fuck up by ghosting you because of my own anxiety. Looking back, that was easily one of the dumbest, most self-sabotaging things I’ve ever done.
That was seven years ago.
I read the other day that your brain isn’t even fully cooked until you’re twenty-five. The parts responsible for emotional regulation, making decent decisions, and handling conflict are basically still under construction well into your twenties.
So when we met, we weren’t “finished” people. I was basically a work in progress with shitty judgment and zero impulse control. A huge chunk of who I am today took shape during those years while you were there watching it happen in real time and, for some reason, actually putting up with it. At some point along the way, you basically became a second mother figure to me.
Most people go through that kind of growth alone, or around people who don’t stick around. Thank God we didn’t. We went through it side by side, which feels a little miraculous considering the version of me you had to deal with. Somewhere in all that, without even trying, you made me believe in miracles.
The weird thing about seven years is that you can’t actually feel the scale of it. Memory doesn’t store time in a straight line; it just keeps the peaks, the breaks, and the moments with a bit of an edge. Everything else gets compressed. There’s a name for it: the holiday paradox. Routine days barely leave a trace because the brain stops recording what it already knows. Seven years of random Tuesdays don’t take up much space, while one single bad week can feel larger than an entire good year.
That means most of what those days actually felt like is gone now, folded down into a vague sense of “before” and “after.” That doesn’t feel sad to me. If anything, it’s proof we got comfortable enough that time stopped needing to announce itself.
Also, speaking of seven—there’s Se7en (1995), directed by David Fincher. I’m thinking of rewatching it just to lean into our dumb little number superstition. And apparently the number 27 shows up a lot in Shed (2011) by Title Fight.
2,557 days. 84 months.
I don’t really have the words for what seven years with you means. I don’t think anyone does. But every version of me that exists now—the one who learned how to be a person, who made it through college, who’s slowly figuring out what he wants—exists because you were there for it.
So happy birthday. And happy anniversary to us.
Here’s to everything we’ve already survived and everything still ahead. Also, Adi Brata Broto sends his regards from the heavens above.
And just to remind you how little I sometimes understand you: you once got food poisoning from sushi on a holiday trip, and today we’re celebrating by eating sushi. My caveman brain still hasn’t processed that logic. Then again, you probably feel the same way about me half the time. Which, I guess, is part of why this has worked for so long.
I love you.
