Arielle Reedsy Anthology

Green

I never told anyone. It was never on the plan for them to know.

Nowhere in my mind I searched did it come up that I told someone, explained my ghosts to them.

They wouldn't understand anyway. They would give me that blank stare I saw in the mirror.

No, I never told anyone.

But when I didn't follow the plan, the ghosts that haunted turned to warriors who hunted.

I was supposed to meet him. I knew that much. He would sit behind me one day and we would talk. Later we would go to lunch together at the little cafe on the end of the square, talking and laughing about each other's lives. And later he would show me a girl with a wide and special smile.

I knew it would happen that way.

And I knew that in a few years I would also meet someone who I gave a special smile.

But the fickle thing about a plan you haven't yet lived is it's selective bias.

They never showed me that when he laughed at lunch, his eyes would catch the sun and twinkle, that when he ran his fingers through his hair it was left tousled and handsome, that he would walk away with my heart.

They never showed that stabbing pain when I realized it was her he was smiling for.

But I loved him enough to let him be happy.

Even if it wasn't with me.

Besides, the plan had showed someone else coming along later.

And he did.

And though he never gave me my heart back, and I never had one to give, we were together and he was happy.

So, no. I never told anyone.

And no, memories are not truth.

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I wondered what would happen if you knew your future, but suddenly what happened didn't fit with the only thing you knew. Or thought you knew at least.
She refers to her memory as "the plan" and is okay with this "plan". When she meets a guy though, just like she remembers, they talk and hang out. Then he leaves. All according to the plan.
But what she didn't remember, is that she fell in love with him, not the "special someone" she's supposed to meet later, and so the careful plan of her life remains empty of the hope she thought it would have.