The Permanence of Presence

They say that every seven years, every cell in the human body has replaced itself. Biologically, I am not the same person I was when I met my best friend, Zai, nearly a decade ago. I have lived through many different “eras”, changed my dreams, and outgrown the versions of myself that I once thought were permanent. By all logic of growth, we should be strangers. Yet, there is a terrifying and beautiful impossibility in truly leaving someone behind. We spend our lives moving forward, convinced that we are shedding old versions of ourselves like skin, but the truth is that you don’t realize how much of yourself you’ve given away until you realize that you are scattered in pieces across the souls of everyone you’ve ever known.

Because, Zai, whom I haven’t even had the chance to see in years, sent me a message that actually inspired me to write this:

“The color purple still reminds me of you. Though you may love any color right now, still thinking of you.”

It was overwhelming to realize that I’ve left a mark on everyone I’ve met; that we are all, in some way, carrying pieces of each other. We are so interconnected that we can’t even claim our own memories as ours alone. You could grow apart from someone, maybe even end up hating them, and yet you’ll still remember how they’re allergic to peanuts. The scent of a stranger sitting next to you on a bus could trigger the ghost of a person you once knew years ago. It’s these subtle traces of identity that will never truly leave you.

The truth is, we don’t just inhabit our own bodies. We haunt the lives of everyone we’ve loved, staying behind in the things they see and the way they remember the world. It is a strange comfort to know that while I was busy becoming someone new, someone out there still remembers my favorite color. She reminded me that I am still “me” in a heart miles away, even if my soul was already a mosaic of everyone else I met in those years.

And as it turns out, the version of me Zai remembers isn’t a stranger at all — because purple is still my favorite color.

Naomi and Zai (2016)