Even if nothing changes

I have. And that changes everything

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sunrise from the top of mount tallac in south lake tahoe, ca

Read along as you listen, or close your eyes and let my words fill the space.

I spent a long weekend in South Lake Tahoe, on a little lake just outside of town—a place that has become a distinct familiar hum. A place that lingers on the tip of my tongue, in the stories I tell more than once, and in the stillness of a crisp Minnesota afternoon all these years later.

The trees here are lush and looming, the land—steady and knowing. Being here feels like listening to an old song I still know all the words to. A movie backdrop from a world I built first in my dreams and only later stepped into. The first time I arrived, I was nineteen and clueless. When I left, I was altered in ways I could not yet name. This place taught me how to see, how to move and how to love.

This is where I met her—my once-upon-a-time best friend. A friendship that rewired me. We used to send thirty-minute voice notes spilling across state lines. We’d utter the trivialities of life to one another and reveal soft inspired moments as well as ones that ache and yell. I shared everything with her; question marks and all. Now, silence has settled between us like the empty fields of the Midwest. I think of her every day. Sometimes I recognize her mannerisms in a stranger. The same tilt of the head, startled joy, the rhythm and vibrato with which she speaks.

When I came back to Tahoe, I opened some kind of portal. A liminal space with several layers and textures. I could stand in any corner of camp and see my ghosts interact with one another. Fractals of my past self painted my surroundings with used colors. I watched as my nineteen year old face laughed, unbound. And then my twenty-two year old self—pensive and trying to unravel her questions as if they were a pair of wired headphones that had been thrown into the bottom of a large bag. Temporarily consumed and then relieved by a lightness that came and went in the form of romance. I can still feel the flutters.

It is exactly as I left it two Novembers ago.

My biological father once told me, “Aunque nada cambie, si yo cambio, todo cambia.” Even if nothing changes, if I change, everything changes.

And it’s true — the dinner bell still rings twice when it’s time to eat. The heat of the Washoe October sun is enough to warm my wet body in a bikini. The Point is still my favorite cabin, I just don’t live there anymore.

As a visitor of this place I used to call home, I felt equal parts out of place and right where I belong. To come back felt both necessary and wrong, like breaking a sacred seal. I told myself I didn’t know why I’d returned, but maybe I did. Maybe I came to touch the pulse of something still living, or dead. To integrate what was with what is.

When I saw familiar faces, I was hit with violent waves of sickening nostalgia. The original characters understood the pangs of grief I was talking about. The new characters asked if I’d had a bad time here. “Oh, no. Quite the opposite.” I replied. These were some of the most tender and true days of my life. And I will yearn for them forever. For the moment just before it was time to meet them. For the innocence I found in trying to fly close to the sun.

After I gave into the dizziness of remembering, I realized something: it was never this place that contained the magic. It was not responsible for the ecstatic joy or profound discoveries that I created or unlocked here. A place is just a setting—often fixed and reliable. Like the backdrop of a play, or a jewelry box for memories. It holds things that feel important and real. But what if people are all we’ve got and change is the only thing we can count on?

We take a trip into town. We drive up a narrow, rocky road — only wide enough for one car at a time. It takes us twenty minutes each way. We look for incense, iron pills and a pre-roll. And later, at Sprouts Cafe we drink lattes and talk about our cousins and the future. A song came on that stopped me mid-sentence. I was suddenly transported to a hotel room with a boy who once occupied my heart. Later, another song played—it was one that he used to play in the car when we were together. This is where I met him for the first time when I was twenty-one visiting my once-upon-a-time best friend. Today I can only imagine him to be in a country far away from this one. And she’s probably in Portland, getting ready to throw a top notch communal celebration. And I feel the sweet absurdity of it all. How time is a circle, not a line.

As the sun dipped into the yellow Aspen, I danced among them — letting the melancholy in. Grief and gratitude imitate my breath. In the presence of bright and holy things, I recall that to grieve deeply is to have loved fully. And love doesn’t go away—it doesn’t know how. It only knows how to transform, taking new shape and occupying new corners of the same world.

Any love I gave anyone is theirs to keep. That’s the thing about love. It is not dependent on conditions or time. It just is.

I think maybe I came back to set this love free from the confines of memory. To feel it once more in this new hue. To honor it—and release it into the water, mountains, trees and air around me.

Sometimes you must touch the land once more to bid it farewell. Zip tie its loose ends with a kiss and a prayer. Don’t follow me, I say to it. I’ve loved loving you and I must go now—into the woods of the rest of my life. It will be green. Even without you, I will recognize the emerald when I see it. And who we once were when we saw it together.

Because even if nothing changes, I have. And that changes everything.

<3

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