Saturday, March 29th, 2025 // 1:25PM:
It’s 80 degrees in New York City; the warmest day of the year so far, and the warmest day since early Autumn. Everyone is out enjoying the nice weather; riding their bikes, going on walks, wearing clothing that you would normally see in the early days of summer. The wind is creating this nice breeze, so it doesn’t make you sweat that much when walking in the sun.
As for me, I went to take a walk to enjoy this nice weather; I already had to run an errand before the store closed later, as they seem to close early on the weekend. I was going to take the bus home and call it a day, but my body was telling me to stay out a little longer. Go and get a coffee, and just do something that wasn’t planned for once. So I did.
I ended up walking down the block of where three of my childhood best friends lived in Borough Park. It was crazy to pass by the buildings they used to live in. I remember being 14, standing outside the building of one of my friends as she sat outside of her bedroom window, hanging out with me since her mom didn’t let her come outside. A couple of doors down, I remember being 8, being picked up by my mom and sister one night after spending the day with my other friend, watching the VHS tape of both Britney and NSYNC’s making of their respective music videos from 2000. Even further down the block, I remember being 11 years old, hanging out with another friend upstairs in her house, listening to the Destiny’s Child album, “Destiny Fulfilled” – singing along in her living room and playing with dolls. It’s crazy to think that this block holds memories of all these different eras of my childhood and adolescence, not knowing that all of them would move away as we got older. One of them is now engaged. One of them is now a musician. One of them wasn’t doing too well the last I heard of them nearly a decade ago, and hope that they’re living in a quiet and safe space.
I’m now sitting in the schoolyard of my old middle school, and I can’t help but think about the different memories that live in here. As a teenager, I remember sitting in the “well” area of the schoolyard, watching the boys play Yu-Gi-Oh cards on the table as the girls sat on the benches gossiping. I remember showing my first ever poem to the group of girls who wrote poetry during lunch, saying that I should consider becoming a writer. I remember taking pictures of all of my friends on my digital camera, watching the 6th graders mob the schoolyard as this girl ate the roaches off the ground (real story) and watching my friends play basketball, pretending I knew what the hell the rules of the game were. I remember graduation practice, the carnival that our class was almost banned from attending after misbehaving, the kids playing handball on the wall of the school… I am merely sitting here as my younger self, smiling as I remember what life was like during a time that I so desperately wanted to be older and grown because every other teenager acted that way. I wish I cherished those moments a little more and lived them a little longer.
This schoolyard was also the place I said my final goodbye to a toxic lover the summer after freshman year of college. It was getting dark and the lights were just set to turn on. It was in that moment that I knew I couldn’t keep going on feeling this way; living in this constant state of fear for my life and having my heart constantly broken and manipulated because I didn’t know that true love was when you find it within yourself. It was the first time that I actually put myself first, letting go of something (and someone) that I had to learn how to live without. It was the first of many heartbreaks since then, and the first of many hard life lessons I learned. I smile now, not realizing just how much of my life was lived in this schoolyard. I could even still see my white lab and Dalmatian mixed dog run in the snow, laughing as he hopped up and down and seemed yellow against the white snow. Pal lived a beautiful life and sometimes I miss his goofy personality.
Memories don’t hurt until you actually sit down and remember them. Sometimes, you don’t even realize you remember them until you’re in the place that you made them. Although sometimes I wish it was easier to forget them and act like they don’t impact you anymore, I remember how they shaped me. I’m not the same girl that was running in this schoolyard, chasing the boys as they teased me in middle school. I’m not the same girl that put on a pretend concert with my childhood friends before the summer was over. I’m not even the same girl that left out of this schoolyard that one night after watching the person I forever said goodbye to walk away from me, going towards the train station to head back home. I am not the girl that lives in this schoolyard.
I am now a woman that carries these memories, hoping that I could one day visit these places without missing the person that lives in them. I am now the woman that still struggles with memory, hoping that one day I can coexist with them as I make new memories. We seem to live so much in our past that when our present comes our past, we seem to regret not having done more to make the best of it at the time.
I had to leave the schoolyard, as I felt myself becoming overwhelmed with emotion, sitting in my memory for too long without coming up for air. Maybe I needed to sit in there long enough to realize just how important it is to live in the moment. Maybe I needed to feel the knot develop in my throat, the steady breathing as my eyes got watery, and mentally live the last 25 years of my life in this neighborhood to realize that it’s time to stop being afraid of growing up. Growing old. Losing the ones we grew up with and meeting new ones to grow old with.
It’s time to let go of the fear that life will never be as great as it was when we were younger. To our younger selves, we’re everything we never thought we could possibly be: Alive. Shouldn’t that be the reason why we should keep going?
Letters From Liz. 