The Last Time I Saw My First Love Was on My 17th Birthday—Thirty Years Later, a Woman Who Looked Exactly Like Her Walked Into My Yard and Changed Everything I Believed About the Past

me there.

A small rise above the water.

A simple stone marker in the ground.

No name.

Just a date.

My birthday.

“Our birthday,” Lily used to call it.

I stood there for a long time.

Not speaking.

Not moving.

Just existing beside something that had held her absence for thirty years.

Ashley cried.

So did I.

Not for the version of her I lost.

But for the version of continue reading …