Moon River

I watched Past Lives the other night, and for the first time in a long time, I felt like a movie was speaking directly to me. Not in an obvious way, not in a way that screamed, this is your story, but in a way that settled in my chest and stayed there.

It’s a quiet film, one that doesn’t rush to tell its story. Instead, it lingers,soft, aching, and filled with everything left unsaid. It’s about Nora and Hae Sung, childhood friends who were separated when Nora’s family moved to another country. They reconnected years later online, falling into something that felt like love, but also like a dream, real, yet distant, like holding onto water. No matter how much they talked, no matter how much they tried to close the gap, they never did.

And isn’t that just like us?

We never had New York, Vienna or Patagonia. We never had that moment where we sat across from each other, looking for answers in the silence. But we had the late-night conversations, the feeling of time bending when we talked, the way we understood each other in ways that felt rare. In a world full of strangers, we found something familiar in each other. And for a while, it felt like enough.

But Past Lives reminded me of something I didn’t want to admit, connection isn’t always enough. Love, real love, isn’t just about finding someone who sees you. It’s about timing. It’s about choices. It’s about whether two people are willing to step out of the dream and make something real.

And that’s where we got stuck, isn’t it?

We were always floating between what we were and what we could be. We planned to meet, but it never happened. It was always soon, maybe later, someday. But someday never came. And maybe that’s the cruelest part, not that we ended, but that we never really began.

There’s a scene in Past Lives where Hae Sung looks at Nora and tells her, In another life, we would have been together. That maybe, in a different version of the world, things would have worked out. And sometimes, I wonder the same about us. If we had met, if we had stood face to face, if we had been brave enough to pull our story out of the digital space and into reality, would it have changed anything? Or were we always meant to be just this, an almost, a possibility left unexplored?

There’s a part of me that wants to believe we were something more, that what we had mattered. That even if we never met, even if we drifted apart, there was meaning in the connection we shared. That the way we existed together, our words, our understanding, our quiet companionship was real, even if it was fleeting.

But I also know that life moves forward. People change. The person I was when I met you isn’t the person I am now. And maybe that’s why Past Lives hit me so hard, because it’s not just a love story. It’s a story about growing up, about moving on, about realizing that not all connections are meant to last forever.

Sometimes, people come into our lives not to stay, but to teach us something. Maybe you taught me what it feels like to be understood. Maybe I taught you how to let go. Maybe we were never meant to be a love story at all, maybe we were just a reminder that even the most fleeting connections can leave a mark.

And maybe, just like Hae Sung and Nora, we were always meant to say goodbye.