Some things are bigger than us. There exist secret, intangible currents that carry us away on journeys we can’t consent to or predict or navigate in the moment. All we can do is trace them on maps from memory once they’ve concluded.

Was there a moment…in the moment…when I knew?

With him, yes. Moment after moment. They said, “You are not in control this time.”

Like when he sat me down between rounds at Franklin Park to show me the research he’d done into the history of his apartment building. Screen caps of census records and deeds. And he lit up with glee.

He wasn’t trying to impress me. And he couldn’t have known it was the type of thing I did as well. I don’t know if he’ll ever understand what it felt like for me to not feel so alone or strange or helplessly plopped into the wrong era, the wrong continent, the wrong body, the wrong gender. To have become tired in my pursuit of kindred.

In that moment, he unearthed parts of me I’d buried deep, and left them bare, exposed and vulnerable.

This current has smashed me against rocks. It has swirled me in eddies that left me exhausted. But it also reminded me that I am alive. And that I sometimes have to put my trust in someone else, even if the very thought is abhorrent and the danger is real.

I couldn’t tell you what it was all about. The map has yet to be drawn that would show me the delta and confluence of waters, where moment meets meaning. But if life has taught me anything, it is that all of this will serve a purpose later on and I will realize what a silly girl I was to want the small at the expense of the big.

I just have to keep reminding myself: I am not in control this time. I must learn to trust. The rest will come as it should.