This is only the fourth time I’ve met you; this is only the fourth time that I’ve gotten to sit and write your name on my paper.
I’ll get to spend the day with you about 16 more times in my life, 20 if I’m lucky.
You’re rare, an uncommon occurrence that throws a wrench in the oppressive schedule that dictates my year.
I like rare things.
Asteroid showers, blue moons, when Mondays are the first day of the month.
I like it when something is scarce enough to catch my attention, to throw me out of the repetition that I’m terrified of my life falling into.
I love you for your rarity, but you’ve missed so much.
In the years you’ve been away I have grown into someone entirely new.
Are you upset?
Do you struggle to recognize me?
You met me first at three years old when the February snow danced with my young eyelashes, and I couldn’t feel the cold through the beauty of it all.
Then again at seven, in second grade and too young to understand who you were, my teacher decorated her room with frogs, so I decided I liked you.
And then I was eleven, toasting marshmallows and eating too many smores’ at the birthday party for the parent of a girl I barely knew.
But it’s been four years since then and you’ve missed so much. I’m not the same girl you saw at that bonfire and this is not the same world.
You have seen my life in a few, sparse, fleeting moments throughout time, and I am glad to meet you again now.
Please remember this day for me, so that four years from now, I can look back with you to the person I am today.
You sit beside me while I write this, both of us four years older, both of us four years changed.
On the 29th of February, 2028, I will not be the same girl, and this will not be the same world.
I will not dare to predict the future; if the last four years have taught me anything it’s that nothing expected will happen, and everything unexpected will.
I will not dare to predict the future, but I look to our next meeting with optimism.
I’ll be nineteen years old. I’ll be living through the last few months of my teenage years. I’ll have graduated high school a year earlier. My life will look nothing like it does today.
Of course, that’s terrifying, as the unknown always is, but I’m teaching myself to grow out of my fear.
The next time we meet, I’ll be nineteen, then 23, then 27, 31, 35, 39.
You will watch me live my life through snapshots of time, for one day every four years.
We will meet about 16 more times, 20 if I’m lucky, and I know for sure that I will never again be the girl I am today.
I can’t wait to meet you again. See you in four years.
