Before You Knew Me
717 Words
I was twenty-one.
Funny, isn’t it?
At twenty-one, I thought I was grown.
I had my first proper job, my own little apartment and just enough confidence to mistake certainty for wisdom. I knew exactly how my life was going to turn out.
Or at least I thought I did.
I wanted to build something that mattered. I worked hard, sometimes too hard, and your grandmother was forever reminding me that there was more to life than work.
She’d say, “Priscilia, one day you’ll realise the office can survive without you.”
I’d tell her, “Maybe. But the office won’t know that until I teach it.”
She’d roll her eyes.
I got a lot of eye rolls from that woman.
I was ambitious.
Not because I cared about titles or corner offices.
I just wanted to prove to myself that I could build a life I was proud of.
I was kind too.
Probably more than was good for me.
I believed people when they said they’d changed.
I believed promises.
I believed that if you loved people honestly, they’d love you the same way.
Looking back now, I don’t laugh at that girl.
I feel protective of her.
She hadn’t learned yet that love and truth don’t always arrive holding hands.
She still believed that if two people loved each other enough, they’d find a way.
I hope you don’t think less of her for that.
I don’t.
I think she deserved the chance to believe it.
She just happened to meet the wrong man before she met the right lessons.
Although…
If I’m being completely honest…
I didn’t know he was the wrong man.
Not then.
To me…
He was simply Richard.
It’s funny.
After all these years, that’s still the first thing I think of.
Not the man everyone else came to know.
Not the man whose name you’ve spent your whole life never hearing.
Just…
Richard.
If you’d asked me that morning what I thought was waiting for me, I probably would’ve said a mountain of paperwork, two meetings that could’ve been shorter and your grandmother reminding me—for the third time that week—not to skip lunch.
I certainly wouldn’t have said the rest of my life.
Life has a strange sense of humour that way.
The days that change everything rarely look important while you’re living them.
They begin with alarm clocks that ring too early, cups of coffee that go cold because you’ve forgotten where you left them, and mothers who somehow know you’ve left the house without eating.
That morning was no different.
I woke up late.
Not terribly late.
Just late enough to convince myself I could still make it to work on time if I hurried.
I couldn’t.
I never could.
Your grandmother used to say punctuality and I had agreed to keep our distance from each other.
She wasn’t wrong.
I was halfway out the door when the phone rang.
I almost ignored it.
Almost.
It was your grandmother.
“Tell me you’ve had breakfast.”
Not “Good morning.”
Not “How are you?”
Straight to breakfast.
I laughed.
“I love you too.”
“Priscilia.”
“I’m running late.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“It usually isn’t.”
There was a sigh on the other end.
The kind only mothers know how to sigh.
“You work too much.”
“I know.”
“You say that every time.”
“I know.”
“And tomorrow you’ll do exactly the same thing.”
“…Probably.”
She laughed before I did.
“Come for dinner tonight.”
“I’ll try.”
“No,” she said. “You’ll come.”
There was something about the way she said it that made me smile.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Good. Now go and buy yourself something proper to eat before that company convinces you coffee is a food group.”
“I will.”
It wasn’t exactly a lie.
I meant to.
I just didn’t know that keeping that promise would lead me somewhere I never expected.
If I’d walked straight back to the office that afternoon instead of stopping for lunch…
Well…
You and I wouldn’t be having this conversation.
- Writer
