Rereadings

When he was twenty-three he got lost in the moment with her; she was thirty-three at the time. Back then he felt she was lost in the moment with him too, but by his twenty-seventh year, when twenty-three seemed a lifetime ago and thirty-three still seemed far ahead, he looked back and thought she couldn't have been caught up in the moment with him, as he had been with her; she must have known exactly what she was doing, she must have been more in control than she had seemed to him; thirty-three must be too wise to get lost like that, thirty-three must mean full control. He spent the next few years of his life hating her and blaming her for much of what happened to him, with her, and after her. This continued until he reached his thirty-second year and thirty-three was just around the corner, when he still didn't find the control he had expected to have by then, he still got caught up and got lost in the moment. Now he understood it all differently, and the bitter memories he had long replayed repeatedly in his mind gave way to other memories he had forgotten, fond moments he smiled at as he remembered. What he regretted, now, was all the bitterness, and the time he'd spent hating what he now saw was never worth the hate at all.