Lately, my favorite song I listen to is ‘Stay Gold’ by Stevie Wonder. You know that song from ‘The Outsiders’? One of the greatest songs of all time?! Yeah. That one. It’s one of my favorites.
The first verse goes like this:
Seize ... upon the moment of long ago
One breath away and there you will be
So young and carefree again you will see
That place in time
So gold
You don’t ever realize in the moment that the ‘gold’ times are ‘gold’ do you? You never understand how good it is, until it’s over. Right?
I want to talk about ‘seasons of life.’
(fair warning - I say seasons of life approximately 38,790 times in this post, I’m SORRY.)
When I think about “seasons of life” I’ll think of a specific time in my past and who I was at that time.
Who my best friend was, where I was living, what my favorite shirt was, what music I was into, who I had a crush on, etc. All those little things that make up that place in time. Certain smells. Friends. Routines.
You don’t realize it while you’re in it, but we’re always in a “season” of some sort. And the sad, beautiful, anxiety inducing reality is that we never get to relive these “seasons.”
They’re so incredibly specific to who you’re around, what state of mind you’re in, and everything you’re experiencing.
Unlike spring, summer, fall and winter, we only get these “seasons” once in a lifetime.
Even the completely mundane, ordinary days of your life make up a season that you will never get back. One that you will probably miss a lot someday.
For example, I never thought I’d miss waking up at 7 in the morning for High School until years after. Not that it was necessarily fun, but just the fact that I know I will never be a 16 year old running around the track whistling at all the football players with my best friends again. I can’t go back. And I wish I would have spent less time complaining every time my alarm went off every morning. I wish I woke up knowing “this won’t last forever.”
Because just like the song says,
“Nothing gold can stay.”
For me, a prominent “season” that comes to mind is when I moved to Barcelona. This was now 3 months ago and it was liberating. It’s all thanks to this rare gem, her name is Yokiya Ito. (Yokiya, if you were the only good thing that came out of me moving to Barcelona, it would still be the best decision of my life.) Every time I was with her, life felt like a movie and I’m so glad that out of all the people in this world - we got each other.
Yokiya
We became best friends fast. We shared the same Spanish class and so one day after class we went to grab a coffee together and then it was just done for us. It was written in the stars. We became inseparable ever since. We’d just sit in Yokiya’s room talking out loud, until one of us eventually caught what the time was to see that we’ve been staying up all night talking.
Nothing extremely life changing occurred during this part of my life, so at the time, it was hard to view it as a monumental life experience I would look back on - but I think we never fully realize that until moments later anyway. Regardless of whether I knew it or not… these months when Yokiya and I became best friends were some of the best times of my life. Every single day was fun. Even the simple tasks. We were both studying Spanish - we’d practice our Spanish together often. She’d come to me for borrowing my dresses, and I’d come to her to borrow her skin products. I’d go with her to shopping outlets and in return she came to me for when I needed help with taking the COVID test. She would go to me when she needed to rent and I would go to her when I needed a shoulder to cry on. When we were together, we spent our nights talking about everything and nothing, going to Mcdonalds at 3 am, getting dressed to parties and planning France together. We even managed to make it to France, damn! People would be shocked when I told them I had gained a best friend here. It was always followed by “don’t you get tired of each other??” But the truth is, I didn’t. And she didn’t. I thought about it all the time actually, about if we didn’t see each other daily. And we both agreed that we would be so lonely (because guys, we are literally the same person) we’d end up being with each other anyway.
The second verse in ‘Stay Gold’ says,
Steal ... away into that way back when
You thought that all would last forever
But like the weather nothing can ever
And be in time
Stay gold
And that’s the way I felt about this time in my life. It was so good, I could never picturing it ending.
You never really do, you know?
So now as my chapter of Barcelona is over, I’m taking it so hard. I know it’s simply just another season of life coming to an end. But it feels equal to heartbreak to leave her.
“We’ll still be best friends” is something she told me, and something I told myself often, to ease the pain.
And I know, Yokiya will forever be someone I consider my best friend. My future bridesmaid at my future wedding. This pain I’m feeling now because this chapter of us in Barcelona is over will subside and we will still hang out and laugh and go to Mcdonalds at 3 am.
But…it’s different.
We won’t have M floor as our meeting spot before going anywhere together anymore,we won’t go to Mcdonald’s in the MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT like we used to, we won’t sit in Yokiya’s room and laugh at each other like we did so many times before. Because that season of life is over. Those versions of who we were, are gone.
And that’s okay. The thing is, this is all just apart of life. Life moves fast, it flows and it changes. We’re both happy and Yokiya will be a part of my life forever. And in fact, soon we’re both unknowingly be in other stages of life that we will cry about someday when they’re over.
But you know what? I’d give just about anything to have one more day in Barcelona with my best friend, my girl, Yokiya.
The third verse of the song goes like this,
But can it be ... when we can see
So vividly a memory
And yes you say so must the day
To fade away
And leave a ray of sun
So gold
Some of the most vivid memories and significant moments I think about, are the season where I had a boyfriend and the time we spent together.
It must come to an end eventually, but I do believe that even the worst relationships can leave a ray of sun.
Dylan
Loving Dylan Chamas was never a choice.
We met, and it didn’t take long for me to fall for him. Our relationship felt natural. Familiar. Like deja vu.
I really did love him. So much. So fast. More than I could express outside of quoting vague Lana Del Rey lyrics late at night.
I loved him so intensely, so deeply, it felt...beyond my control. So there was the season were we started dating. Things were good. We would look at each other in class so much to a point where we would caught eye contact consistently. He asked me to meet up outside of class one day, so we ended up at a random cafe then walking around Barcelona from daylight to night & sharing a kiss on the doorstep and the rest is history. We had the best most stupidly cliche storyline - but it was as perfect as it was in the movies.
Then the season came where we were finally boyfriend and girlfriend. He never really went to class until he started dating me. His attendance improved by 50% simply because he was so excited to see me in the halls. It was the classic school romance where we’d try to time it perfectly for when the other person arrived school so we could sit next to each other in class. In this phase of our lives, we loved to go back to his place where he lived with his Spanish host family to talk, making out and read lines from his books. (He’s a smart one!) We made a music playlist for each other, we took all the couples test, like the important ones (learned each other’s love language, the personality test and checking our zodiac sign compatibility, like I said - the important ones) and he started practicing Norwegian on the app Duolingo. We were always walking around the city, exploring it together while getting to know each other. There was always something to learn from each other or a new thing to discover about one and another. One time he even went with me to Zara because I needed something from the store and he came along because he missed my company.
There was a season where we were together all the time. We practically became a part of each other’s day. We spent the last weeks of September and the entire October month together, all day and every day. We packed in a lot of memories in a very short amount of time.
There was the time when he told me he loved me and I said it back. We were so in love with each other.
There was the time when we started to talk about our future. He was leaving for Costa Rica on his gap year program and I knew I wanted to wait for him. I knew I wanted to be with him for the long run. We went to the beach with some friends at night and during the last hour, we wandered off to the other side of the beach, to have our own special moment. I leaned back and put my head on his chest. My love for him felt heavy, and I felt it deep. I still had time with him but I remember knowing and understanding in that moment - that our perfect little romance was soon coming to an end.
There was the season where we started to become more distant from each other. Nothing was going according to the plan. I thought I had my entire life planned out, but things were spiraling out of our control. Timing was so off and we didn’t know what to do.
Then there was the season where things got bad. There was so much noise. So many opinions about our relationship. So much fear surrounding it all. So despite Dylan’s desire for me and only me, I was terrified of getting hurt. So despite I had never been so sure of anything like I was about Dylan, in him I reinforced every insecurity he had.
And then… there was the season where we hadn’t seen each other in quite some time and we saw each other in school. He ran into me and he smiled and my cheeks turned red as if it was our first day in class and we had just caught each other staring. We melted into each other like no time had passed. Like we were in the class room again, begging time to stop.
And then things got bad again....
The season where he turned cold and refused to talk to me. For weeks, I was lighting myself on fire, trying to keep him warm, and eventually I burned out. I had to distance myself, but the distance hurt almost worse than getting burned by this fire. Because, when Dylan was hurt, he would isolate. He would shut off to the point where I couldn’t reach him if I tried. So I’d sit there, in my bed, wondering. Wondering if he’s okay. Wondering if he’s going to be okay. Wondering if he missed me. Wondering if we’d ever be able to figure things out. My host grandma would walk past my door room at night to check up on me, and I’d see her kneeling down by the door, praying for me, with tears running down her face.
I broke up with him at the beach in late November a Tuesday evening - I stumbled inside and fell into Yokiya’s warm hug. I remember looking at my phone a few hours later and seeing two missed calls and a text message saying “can we talk?” with a picture of him looking like a wreck where you could tell he’s been crying - when I left the beach.
Then the season came where I was happy, living an entirely separate life from him - for some days, weeks even. But deep down I missed him every single day.
I tried to hide the aftermath of my broken heart, but the Lana Del Rey, Adele and Taylor Swift lyrics were starting to get dismal.
People noticed.
We took turns hurting each other in a cycle that lasted throughout our entire relationship.
I continued to love him when he broke my heart and I still loved him when I broke his.
After our last conversation it was pretty clear to me what had happened with us. My part in it all, at least.
I never allowed myself to fully surrender. I was always half in, half out.
It was like I was caring for a sunflower in pitch black storage closet, and wondering why it wasn’t blooming.
We never created an environment for our relationship to thrive.
...and I loved him the entire time. When a season of life ends - specifically with a boyfriend - it’s usually harder than any other season you will live. Because those are the ones you really don’t get back. It’s different than graduating from high school, or your roommate moving out. You don’t get to revisit your old relationships like you can at a basketball game, or a 10 year reunion. You don’t get to stay best friends with your exes like you can with an old roommate. You say goodbye to your routine, your favorite places, your favorite songs. You say goodbye to their family, their dogs, their living rooms. You say goodbye to who you were as a person when you were together - because you’ll never be the same version of yourself again. There’s a lot of goodbye’s including obviously, the person you loved. And boy, is it painful. Because when it’s over - it’s really over.
It ends.
It ends.
It always does.
The last verse of ‘Stay Gold’ says,
Life ... is but a twinkling of an eye
Yet filled with sorrow and compassion
Though not imagined all things that happen
Will age too old
Though gold
I think about that. How life is ‘a twinkling of an eye.’ It goes by so fast. I didn’t think it would happen so fast. I truly felt like you and I had more time together. There’s never enough time, is there?
Saying goodbye to him in his room. The room I had been in so many times before. It was the most familiar scene I had ever known.
And suddenly the words entered my mind
“This is the last time.”
Now, that could have been the drama queen inside of me begging for attention. But I knew deep down, that things would be different. Really different.
So it was kind of heavy to sit and wonder if this really would be the last time, ever.
Knowing we went from two individuals becoming one some months earlier in that room. Now everything was different, we would sit in his room anxiously glancing at each other and the clock every 2 minutes waiting for the “time’s up” so we could say goodbye to each other and this chapter of Barcelona life as we knew it. We tried to act calm, and fill the time with conversation. We sat in his little room of a size of a jail apartment talking about what happened to us, *trying* to keep things light. To anyone outside might not realize how big of a moment this was for us, but in just a few short moments, everything was about to change.
We were racking our brains trying to think of something - anything, just to hold on a little bit longer. But eventually I finally looked at him and said
“Okay, I”ll let you go,…It’s time to go.”
And we couldn’t fight it. It was time. Dylan’s new season of life was begging to begin, and we had to let it happen.
I stood there, taking in the scene and we hugged it out. A completely normal, totally ordinary scene, but it took everything in me not to burst into tears.
And I remembered the two of us walking around the neighborhood on all those weeks, with Dylan holding his pipe in one hand and me in the other. How did we get here? How did it get so late so soon?
He walked away, and just as he was almost out of view - he turned his head and we shared one last eye contact moment.
Just like that. It was over.
This is life.
They say nothing gold can stay, but I don’t think thats true. You’ll always be saying goodbye to phases of life. Those moments will fade, but with that brings a new shiny golden season right to your door.
Its true that it ends.
But I think that if you are always aware of life as it’s happening, if you’re always fully present in the now…
You can stay gold forever.
Sofie