How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours.

— Wayne Dyer

It’s sometime in the evening, just after work. You’re riding the 48L up Geary. At the Union Square stop, you see a girl running for the back door, and you hold it open for her. She jumps on and continues her phone conversation and you both stand there in the back doorway adjacent to one another. You feel your stomach tighten and then drop when you realize who she is. You hear her converse about the job you know she has, gossiping about her friend whose name you know, until a few more stops pass and she ends her call and glances up at your gaze.

There is nothing for a moment. She looks down at your legwarmers and boots and then her eyes meet yours and there it is, a flash of recognition, something that changes her eyes, her mouth, and you smile. It happens naturally. In a very small way, you feel sorry for her. But only in a very, very small way. Because this is the girl your ex-love messed around with just before he broke up with you. She was a catalyst for action. She was his experiment, to see if he could feel something for someone else besides you after all those years, and it was a successful mission. You’ve seen her before in moments you wish you could erase from your mind just over a year ago and you know that she must know you, too, somehow.

Instead of throwing up on her, which was your first inclination, you continue to smile at her until she is creeped out and gets out at the next stop, which is not her stop at all. And you know this because you know where she lives. You know too much. There is such a thing as knowing too much.

And seeing her was a relief, because you’re taller and prettier than she could ever hope to be, and the only reason you feel sorry for her is because she never really knew him in all the ways you know him. But the truth is, you don’t know him, not anymore. And you let yourself think thoughts such as these because you can and because you are listening to Black Rebel Motorcycle Club which doesn’t lend itself to sentimentality, and you know that none of it really matters, because this is just a moment in your intricate story in this life leading up to eventual death in the end, and in the next life you may be sisters or you may be friends. This is what you tell yourself so that you don’t cry. You’ve wasted enough time crying.