To the Stranger You Once Were, 

You arrived to the meeting late. I watched you with a suspecting eye as you dug around for a cigarette in your bag. Between circles of smoke and tousled hair, you made your hurried introductions to the other volunteers. Your name was Olivia, you were twenty-two years old, you were from France, and you had come to Costa Rica to pass a gap year before graduate school. I disliked you immediately. 

For the next hour, you paced frantically back and forth, stopping only occasionally to tend to your neglected cigarette. As we discussed our impending jobs at the surf camp, you promptly took your place as the meeting’s centerpiece, offering up ideas with a startling intensity. You shook me with a deep unsettledness, the way your passion moved you around the room and demanded the group’s unalloyed attention. Against the backdrop of the darkened jungle, you were as wild and remote as the monkeys howling over the silent night. 

The following day, I sat beside you on the beach. You were the only other girl at the camp, and I thought it only sensible to make your acquaintance. You did not ask me the barrage of questions I would become accustomed to in my succeeding travels (Where are you from? Where are you going next? What on earth are you doing here alone at 18 years old?). You asked me plainly what I liked to do, and to this question, I came up ashamedly empty-handed. I was frightened to discover how little I knew of myself, and envious that you seemed to share none of my self-doubt. 

My mistrust of you bloomed into a childish curiosity. You were a stranger by every measure. You feared nothing and I, everything. You indulged in the world and I cowarded away from it. I longed to know you, but you often chose to be alone, disappearing from dinner early and refraining from group activities. To my great joy, the owner of the camp announced that he was expecting new volunteers and needed to free up more living space. Within a few days, we were roommates, sharing the close quarters of a canvas tent. 

Slowly, you revealed yourself. On quiet days, when the rain consumed the camp, we compared photos of home and exchanged whispers of adolescence. On drunken nights, stumbling down unlit roads, we imbued the serenity of the jungle with cheerful laughter. I needed you far more than you needed me. I was scarcely an adult, only just learning how to exist outside the realm of childhood. To add to my growing pains, I was experiencing the agony of solo travel for the first time: nursing a broken heart from a foreign boy, longing for a warm shower, and feeling miserably alone. When it became too much to bear, I sought refuge in your presence–your friendship, your stories, your bewildering spirit. 

For the past three years, we have engaged in a cross-continental game of tag. I found you in Mexico, you came to me in New York, we convened in Seville, in Edinburgh, in Ibiza, in Portugal. I have seen you in trying times. I have watched your lively soul grow weak in the face of life’s heartache and misfortune. I have unburdened you from your almighty pedestal and unraveled the illusory facade that once so captivated me. 

Despite this, my mind’s picture of you unfailingly returns to a single moment. It was a normal morning at the surf camp. Pickup trucks were struggling through potholed roads in the distance, dogs were running around on the muddy earth, and the smell of rice and beans was emanating from the rustic communal kitchen. The daily dance of the jungle was in full motion. I opened the folds of our tent and let my eyes wander to your section of the room. In place of your things, I found a vacant bed. I sat down between the planks of our wooden floor, contemplating this sudden emptiness. I was so sure I would never see you again, and I mourned you as just another moment that had come and gone.

Evidently, my prophecy did not come to fruition. You are now far from a stranger. I know the names of your family members, the city where you grew up, the boys you have loved, your favorite foods, and the time that you like to wake up in the morning. However, I often think of the stranger you once were, the enigmatic figure that I did in fact leave behind in the jungle that sorrowful morning. How wonderful it was to discover this new world for the first time, and how wonderful it was to have it illuminated through her eager and yearning eyes.