Déjà You

I thought you were my greatest love story, but it turns out you were just a brain tumor. Now I’m lying here on the operating table waiting for them to take you away from me. 

Of course it was the first day back to the office after three years away. What could be more triggering? I had déjà vu twice before falling on my face in the middle of the office.

This wasn’t so foreign to me. Several times when I was young it happened that whatever I was doing, no matter what it was—walking into a room, doing my homework, playing my favorite video game—the events of that moment would suddenly flash in my mind and be repeated back to me, as if from afar, letting me know I had done this before. There would always be a faintly plastic smell that would wash over me until it filled my head like helium in a balloon and I would float up until everything below me narrowed in on itself like looking through a huge funnel or a backwards telescope. These were strange out-of-body, world-turned-upside-down experiences that always ended with vomit on the floor. 

Although this happened a lot, apparently it was never enough to worry anyone. Everyone got déjà vu now and then, right? It just turned into one of those quirky things about me. Oh yeah, remember, Jens? You would always get sick whenever you had déjà vu. So strange, my mom would say casually whenever someone mentioned having déjà vu. 

But it stopped as I got older. Until that day just a few weeks ago. 

The first time was when I was pulling into the parking lot, parking in the same spot I had last parked in three years ago. I had almost vomited then too once I had peeled myself off the ceiling of the garage but was somehow able to stave it off. Walking into my office, I chalked it up to the oddity of it all—coming back to a place I had spent nearly more time in than my own home after all these years was bound to mess with my brain.

And then it happened again when I saw that picture of the beach in San Juan I had hung on the whiteboard at my desk—a snowy white beach set against a wall of brilliant blue. I hadn’t seen this picture in all that time away, and I had nearly forgotten it, which is hard to confess to you now. Such a simple picture holding such a complicated space in my brain. After a moment I felt a wetness drop on my hand and I looked down to see a bright red spot burrowing a hole in my skin. And then another and another before the déjà vu ripped me away from myself, throttling me out through the window at my desk, leaving me to watch as I sat there staring at that picture over and over, forever and ever until I was returned to myself. 

I got up to rush to the bathroom, the blood from my nose pooling on my hand. I made it three steps before the nausea and dizziness overwhelmed me and I crumbled to the floor. 

And that’s when I saw you for the first time in five years. I woke up next to you on—what I later learned was—our favorite beach. Your hand was resting on my naked chest and you looked at me with such concern. You told me you thought I was never going to wake up, that I don’t usually nap like that, that you wondered if I was sick. That you were glad I was back among the living. Did you know what you were saying? No, how could you…? You said Vamos and pulled me up. It was so bright and the sun was behind you so I couldn’t see your face. It wasn’t until we started to walk towards the street that fed into the beach and you turned around and said Vienes? Are you coming? And I realized who you were. 

Paco. 

My Paco. 

I had come to San Juan for a week-long work conference and we met on my first day there. One of my more party-loving colleagues had invited me out to Viejo San Juan, and I had begrudgingly agreed, usually preferring to head to bed early on the first night. You were there at the bar, La Sombrilla Rosa, and I saw you right away. How could I not? Part of me hoped I was the only one who noticed your glow, but it was clear I wasn’t–you were surrounded. But as I walked by, you looked at me. No, you didn’t look at me. You pierced me. You captured me. You took me. I was in love with you immediately. I felt I knew everything about you. You spoke to me through those soft eyes the only words I ever wanted to hear again, I’m yours.

You approached me at the bar, speaking to me in Spanish, and I told you No hablo muy bien español, and you smiled and said No hay problema. Vamos a practicar. How did you know then that we would have so much time to practice? 

We spoke so long that my colleague left in a dramatic and playful huff without me, and you walked me back to my hotel. We coursed through the streets of Old San Juan and you talked to me, slowly, ensuring I understood, about the city, the history, the good and the bad, the beauty and sadness of where you came from. You showed me your favorite part of the old town, a narrow cobblestone street lined with bright blues and greens and oranges that dazzled even in the middle of the night. When we got back to my hotel, I wanted to invite you up, but I was afraid. Of what, I’m not so sure now. Maybe of you. Of others. Of ruining something. Of letting myself get hurt. But you didn’t push it and instead gave me your number. 

I didn’t see you again until my last day there. I thought of you constantly those next several days. I had stupidly not given you my number, having only saved yours in my phone, which meant I would have to contact you, that I would have to break through my fears which were stacked around me like cinder blocks. 

But with a little liquid courage at dinner, I texted you. Quiero verte. Mañana voy. Would you have time to see me before I left? 

You answered right away. Ven. Come. And you gave me your location. I excused myself from my colleagues and rushed to meet you. You waited for me at El Castillo San Felipe, and all we did was sit in the grass and talk until you finally kissed me, and then all we did was kiss and kiss. The rain stopped us, woke us up, and we ran to find cover in the doorway of a purple building just on the other side of the field. I could feel the evening ending. I could feel a decision coming, and I hated it. It wound its way through the streets like a sneaky snake, and I kept looking around waiting for it to strike. You noticed.

No te vas. Don’t go. 

But I had to go, didn’t I? I told you I was sorry. I almost said those other words, three in my language, two in yours. But I felt stupid. This was only the second time for me to ever see you. I lived thousands of miles away. How could I stay? I didn’t see another way. 

But apparently there was another way.

I was crying when I left you, and I started crying again when I found you. 

In this world, wherever, whatever it was, I had never left you. Another me. Or was it me? Or was it a dream? A hallucination? A sickness? They say you’re a sickness. 

Paco, I said. And you looked at me again with concern and said, Si, estoy aqui. I’m here. 

And you were there. You took me by the hand and showed me our life together. Of course you didn’t know you were introducing me to something new–for you, this was another day in nearly five years together, in our life together. I saw our pictures on the wall of our apartment, I heard some of the stories, trying to tease them out of you by pretending to want you to repeat them to me. I heard about your work, and you reminded me of mine. We had dinner at our favorite restaurant, we walked down our favorite streets, we saw our neighbors. I moved through the day in gorgeous shock, unable to fathom what my life could have, had, become. And all throughout the day, same as the day I left you back there in that other universe, I waited for the snake to wind its way towards us. Didn’t I have to go back? When would I go back? 

For me, that night, it was our first time. Could you feel it? Did it feel new to you? There was an ease to it that enveloped me. This was also part of us, part of our home. Us together in this way. After, I tried so hard to stay awake, sensing that sleep would take me away, but in the end I couldn’t fight it, falling fully into your warmth and love. 

And I woke up staring not into your eyes but into the eyes of concerned coworkers on their phones calling the paramedics, calling my family. Blood was still pouring out of my nose. I had passed out for several minutes. 

What followed was, in contrast to the blaze of your presence, several days of cold. Everything was frozen–the hands of the EMTs, the faces of the doctors, the beds in the hospital, the noises of the machines measuring, reading, poking, surrounding me. 

It didn’t take long to get to the root of the cause, to the root of you. I had knocked my head when I fainted so they did a CT scan and then an MRI, and then they found that thing there. They found you. 

They asked me about other symptoms, and I told them about the déjà vu, that it was something I had experienced a lot and that it was always intense. The doctors told me it’s possible that this thing (you) had been with me for many, many years. 

I didn’t tell them about you, but I did ask whether it was possible to experience hallucinations. And they asked, suddenly more concerned, if I had experienced hallucinations. I said no (because I didn’t want you to be), that I had just had a very vivid dream while I was passed out (you can’t be that either, though). The doctor seemed unconcerned then, seemingly unperturbed by, unaware of a solution for the most beautiful and devastating day of my life. 

I waited for another bout of déjà vu. I wanted so badly to see you again. I tried to bring it on myself. I asked my colleagues to send me that picture of the beach. But I stared at it for nearly an hour and nothing happened. I tried hitting my head, but then the nurses caught me and told the doctors and it took some great convincing for them to not call psych, telling them that I just had a very bad headache, which was partially true. They gave me some medicine that numbed me, all of me. And I felt more distant from you than ever before. 

They wanted to do the surgery as soon as possible as they feared things had taken a new, more aggressive turn (which they had in more ways than one, of course). I almost told them no. I was tired of saying no to you. If this was how I could see you, how could I give it up? But looking at the faces of my family and friends when I told them (Jens, they said, we need you here with us), and, if I’m honest, struggling with the reality of it all, I agreed, and they set the date for a week later. 

That whole week I only thought about you and our day, our day which was the culmination of our lives together. My family thought I was despondent because of what was happening to me, the doctors saying the prognosis looked good but these kinds of things weren’t without risk. I could die on the table, they said. Or I could wake up with memory or speech or any other litany of problems. Those were always a possibility. But none of that really mattered. It was really about you and the thought that I might never see you again. 

Right before they took me in the room, I called your number. You remember the last thing you said to me that day, right? Well, one version of you. But you told me if I go, that I should never contact you again. I had kept the promise for you as much as for me. But now, I needed to know. If we were together in that life, why not in this one, after all? Maybe this was all a sign, a way to get me to call you. 

Estoy buscando a Paco. I’m looking for Paco. I didn’t recognize the voice that picked up. A pause, then, Paco…Paco se murió. 

The news of your death (how many forms of our separation must I endure?) unleashed in me a grief that poured out of me in wracking sobs. It took some time for my family and doctors and nurses to console me, again misunderstanding the focus of my pain. 

If it wasn’t all a sign and if I couldn’t be with you in this life and the life that I thought we had was a dream or hallucination or an illness, then maybe it was better that they took it away from me. Maybe it was better that they took you away from me. Maybe they’ll remove all memory of you. Maybe this is the last time I’ll ever have to say goodbye to you. 

I hope you know that, even though I only had three days with you, those three days were my life. You were my life. You’ve always been there. And whether you represent a healthy or unhealthy part of me, whether I remember or don’t remember, whether I am alive or dead or whether you’re alive or dead, you will always be mine, and I will always be yours.