Lately, I’ve started noticing how the tiniest shifts stack up, like pocket change you’ve been dropping into a jar. Then one day, you count it all up and realize: it’s become a dollar.

Whether you’ve watched Sex and the City or not, we all know the trope: Carrie’s friends are offering something wise or funny or deeply important—and all she can do is spiral over the same boy, again. Maybe you’ve had friends like Carrie. Or, if you’re anything like me, you’ve had that sinking realization: oh God… I am Carrie.

If the past always looks perfect and the present always feels uncertain, are we ever really content? Is there even such a thing as “the Good Old Days”? Or are we all just too busy spiraling in the moment to realize we’re already living them?

Perhaps, one day, I’ll look back on right now—this messy, unemployed, figure-it-out-as-you-go season of my 20’s—and think: that was the good stuff. And maybe that’s the whole point.

The title of this post sounds like the plot of a cliché teen movie buried deep in Netflix’s oversaturated romance section. But in real life, there was no scandal, no betrayal, no drama deserving a 20% on Rotten Tomatoes—just a high school boyfriend who couldn’t go… and his best friend who could.

Maybe breakups don’t just show us what we’ve lost—but remind us of the love that won’t leave so easily.

I think sometimes we cling to the labels we’ve been given because it’s easier. Being “the quiet one” gave me permission to to keep my head down and stay small. If I let go of that label, I’d have to make conversation, take up space, risk being seen. I’d be forcing myself to be uncomfortable.

Even though the night hadn’t ended in tears or dramatics, maybe it would have been better if something bad had happened. Not tragic by any means—just story-worthy. Because then, at least, I’d have a tale to spin the next morning. Something to trade in that sacred hungover debrief.

There’s a certain nostalgia that seeps into the present with the humidity of Spring — a muscle memory for old goodbyes. When rain hits warm pavement instead of ice for the first time since last summer, I am suddenly eighteen again, hugging my high school best friends in our graduation caps and gowns, or nineteen, signing the doorframe of my first dorm room, tears in my roommate’s eyes and mine.