Author’s note:

The last time I sat down to try and write this, the world looked a lot different than it does now. Before a global pandemic, I felt more comfortable being angry at the last ten years. I don’t feel that way anymore. I had so much writer’s block, which I can’t even blame the pandemic for. It’s been on and off since the last time we were all together. You guys broke me open, though. You always do. Despite the current status of our personal relationships, know that I’m out here wishing you and your families well and hoping for a brighter day for us all. Ten years later, and I won’t stop believing. 

~Katie Bennett, June 4, 2020

req·ui·em /ˈrekwēəm/ – noun

a Mass for the repose of the souls of the dead; an act or token of remembrance.

***

I’m an unreliable narrator and I have been this whole time. I should have told you sooner. Maybe you already knew.

Ten years ago I stood at a podium I had coveted my whole life and I gave a salutation- a hello- to friends and family. To the future. To all of you. We cried, I think, together. 

I don’t know how much you remember or if that day has taken up as much space in your collective memory as it has in mine. There are so few times in life when you know for certain that something big is changing, and I felt that weight as I sobbed out the thoughts I’d meticulously crafted, trying to put my broken, soaring heart into words. I thanked you all in those moments for everything that we had taught each other as we sent each other out into the real world.

And then, as the last thing I would say to most of you until now- I talked about rivers.

…remember that our paths in life are much like the rivers that flow in our beautiful valley. Three rivers, much like our three communities that all come together at a single point to flow on, mixing and trading bits of ourselves as we went so that at the end, we will never be the same. And though we may break off into different directions, we’ll remain like those rivers, beating ceaselessly on into the unknown future, with pieces of each other that will stay with us forever…

I used to be proud of so many things, that metaphor included. If I close my eyes, I can see your faces. Shiny and gleaming and young. Did we ever have as much hope as we had in that moment? Have we ever had that much hope since? 

Ten years of tarnish has slowly turned that memory. It doesn’t glitter golden for me like it once did and I don’t trust nostalgia anymore. I’m not proud of rivers anymore. After all, how could talking about rivers be anything but a cliche in a city of bridges? 

When I think about all that’s happened since that humid June day, I’m shocked by the sheer volume of catastrophe that I find. The world is much crueler than I believed it to be. A world that crashed an Empire around me. That made me choose sides. That transformed the people whose faces I searched for in that high school gym where they finally, finally set us all free into strangers.

I don’t pretend to have been innocent in this unraveling. I owe so many apologies that are more personal and deliberate than this. I was selfish. I walked away. I let you down. I thought I was making things better, wanted so badly to be the hero, that I couldn’t see the pain I caused. I can’t take those things back so I own them now. I think about those mistakes, and you, every day. This is the apology I never gave. It took me ten years. I’m sorry if it wasn’t worth the wait. 

So much has changed. Maybe everything. Myself included. It’s that realization that has stirred something within me. That, despite everything, change is still constant. Still possible. The pieces of the lives we once led are shattered all around me. But the ground glitters because those pieces were once gilded- golden. Maybe, despite everything that we have put each other through, both in our childhoods and after, there is a hope in the chaos and in the catastrophe. 

Wasn’t that my point? When I compared us to rivers? That ebb and flow would be the natural order of things and that, by growing with you and taking pieces of you with me, that I would grow with you still? Even now? 

Turns out, hope is something fluid. Like water. It takes the shape of its vessel. For so long, I have refused to acknowledge that we are not static, that we are capable of glorious, shifting progress. Beating ceaselessly on into the unknown future. I said it but I didn’t believe it. I locked you all up so tightly in my own image of who you have been that I have prevented you from this flowing. This becoming. I’m also learning that’s a lot what forgiveness feels like: a cool release, running through our fingers as we let things go.

So here I stand, a decade older and probably none the wiser. I am overwhelmed by everything- all the magic and the life that’s happened since we last spoke. And I will continue to mourn all that’s passed: Who we were as children and all the things I couldn’t be. That I’m still not. I mourn those sunny days of our youth when we were as invincible as iron. As sturdy as steel. And yet, now, perhaps for the first time, I have so much hope for us. Perhaps some things that glitter, even though they’ve been broken, are still gold. 

Maybe I’ll have to wait another ten years to find out. It’s about time I gave us all that chance.

In the meantime, I will write no requiem for rivers.