I finally finished reading Americanah. As the type of black man who spent 2013 to 2017 attending AfroPunk every other year, using so too much coconut oil and Shea Butter, and had the canonical event of letting a beautiful black woman run her fingers through my natural fro and tell me my hair type, I’m way behind schedule. Wonderful book, but I felt uncomfortable throughout, and it didn’t hit me until I was done.

At the core of the book, is a simple fact we spend our entire lives outrunning: There is no love like your first one. Even if it was a mess (I’m sure it was). Even if you were stupid (you were), there is simply nothing like the feeling of both not knowing what the hell you’re doing, but feeling enraptured enough to figure it out as you go along. The most jarring part of your first love is that shit is over in a blink, regardless of how much real-world time it swallowed up. You come out of the other side, completely flipped upside-down, and trying to build on what you hopefully learned, while also adjusting to this brand new you and licking your wounds.

You will have better loves, you will be a better person, but just as time tends to do, your recollection is sunnier than the reality. This is why people want to go “back” to the old them, why they lust for versions of partners past that no longer exist. You kind of want them, but you really want yourself. In every phase of my life, I’ve said “I was happier before.” It was a lie. It was always a lie. I was never happier before; I just carried less, and a lot of what you choose to take with you is an (un)conscious choice.

I was happy in my first love, and my second, third, and fourth. I speak highly of them all (well not my fourth, let’s not get crazy) but they didn’t create my inner magic. They didn’t create the past selves I look back upon fondly; I was just comfortable enough to reveal more of myself.

Life can chip away at you, which stuffs you back into your shell. Couple the romantic follies with the trials of life and you start to believe things like “shit was way more fun when I was praying what was left of my Banana Republic check could cover this movies and Outback Steakhouse date!” You were just young, horny and stupid, which to be honest, was a fantastic time. And you can still be two of those things whenever you want! But what you miss isn’t that moment in time, it’s being freed of the societal rules and expectations you are ensnared by. It’s why your friends become more boring every time they get 6 months older, and also why they feel that’s how it has to be. Life never has to “be” anything. You make the choices and you live with them. And if you fuck it up? Make another choice.

I was very distraught one day last year (just kidding, I was distraught every day) because well, my life was collapsing, between my mom’s illness and my career struggles. I told my ailing mother about it because she asked me, she knew my energy was bad. And she really put her foot in my ass, if I may be honest with you. Shit made me cry in the gym; you know I was in a dark place cause my gym is packed with baddies, and I was still in there sobbing (I hear vulnerable men are in rn???? hit my email if you fine). But as per usual, my mother was right. Towards the end of the text message, she said “You have the opportunity to start all over again. Use it and stop feeling sorry for yourself! Rest, have fun, do something different.” I looked up this conversation 2 days ago, and I felt the tears welling up in my eyes again.

I don’t read me and my mother’s old conversations because it still really hurts to do so, but I knew I needed to read that one, specifically. Deep down? I knew, I wasn’t using my clean slate, I saw it as more of a curse than gift. And Americanah reminded me to listen to mommy. There is so much opportunity and so many avenues to become anew that I never have to repeat anything, or long for versions of me that are long gone. I just miss the feeling of being free and less bogged down, as if I can’t take steps to feel that way again right now. I can always change. We can always change. Let’s do it right now.