For the first time in my life, I cried at a sandwich today.
I suppose it’s depression, or something similar to it, but for a while now I’ve been feeling like I have a difficult time feeling things anymore. Birthdays don’t feel like birthdays. Christmas doesn’t feel like Christmas. And most new experiences just feel like watered-down, less vibrant rehashes of things I’ve already done.
But today, that wasn’t true.
Near my parents’ old house there is a small, hole-in-the-wall kind of place that serves burgers and sandwiches. It’s your basic rural American hometown diner kind of place. But it just so happens that they make a club sandwich that is to die for. I used to eat them all the time in my teens and twenties, but ever since my parents moved out of that area, I haven’t had a single one.
Sometimes I crave that sandwich. It’ll be all I can think about. I lust after it. I sit and remember how good it was, and think to myself, it’s probably not that good anymore, or maybe I am just looking back with rose-tinted glasses. Maybe it was never that good to begin with?
Today I decided to take the drive and find out for myself. I walked up to the counter, placed my order, and a couple minutes later they were calling for me to pick it up.
When I first saw it I could have bawled. It was beautiful. Picturesque. Even better than I remembered it in my mind. If anything, this looked more delicious than it ever had before. And once I tasted it? Exactly like I remembered. Exactly as good. Perfect, in every way.
I sat at the table and tried to hold back tears. I failed. This wasn’t just a sandwich. This was a reminder that I can still feel things. And while some things are lost to time, or perhaps not as good as you remember them, there really are things out in the world that are waiting for you to find them again. And when you do, you’ll find you haven’t really lost anything. They say that no man ever steps in the same river twice; for he is not the same man, and it is not the same river. But today, for just a few minutes, I was the same guy I used to be, and that was the exact same sandwich.