Old Friends

There have only been a few people who really really knew me. Or who I felt did. There are many people I have been close to, but there were a few who went even further. These are the people that it felt like, soon after I’d met them, were family. Or something closer. Soulmates. Someone I was already connected too. And it has been awhile since I’ve had anyone like that in my life.

Perhaps that is funny, since they are people whom I immediately felt close to, and felt I’d always know. Because they drifted out of my life as easily as anyone else. Most of them are not out of my life completely, you understand, but we are seperated now by time, and distance, and space, and situations of life and adulthood.

This past weekend, I went with the new “person” in my life to visit  two of these old friends, and was sorely disappointed. It wasn’t the same, and that closeness wasn’t there. I don’t think this was because it isn’t there, indeed, at times I can see these friends and begin talking like it was yesterday. (It is that kind of connection.) In fact, it was the “person”–a later friend of the same two,but not an original part of my friendship–who seemed to cause the disconnect. The person was not there when we shared all that youthful closeness, and not one who has ever understood in quite the same way (perhaps it is the getting there too late). But this time it just didn’t “click”. I sat and listend as Friend 1, and Friend 2, and the “person” talked, and conversed. All glad to see each other after so long, it was hard for me to get a word in. And no one seemed to notice. Not Friend 1, or Friend 2, with whom I once shared such closeness. Not my “person”, with whom I supposedly share that closeness now. I felt like an extra wheel.

Friend 1, especially, was always my friend: was close, and did some important growing up with me. We grew up together. In more ways than one, at more times than one. This person is someone I miss like a part of me, and think of fairly often, though we never talk. Since the weekend we’ve started in brief emails. A sentence here, two or three there. I had hoped that slowly we might reconnect in the day to day, at least a little.

But it turns out my person had the same idea. Wanted the same things as me, and is much blunter, so started into deeper conversations much sooner. 2 email friendships rejuvenated, but mine seems like the lesser half. The sloppy seconds. And this stabs deeply, from someone I was so close with once, and my person was not.

Then tonight, as I finished my dinner, the phone rang. I didn’t leap up, since I was eating, and it is rarely for me. It was assumed to be my person’s family member, but it wasn’t. It was Friend 1. I could tell as soon as my person answered and started talking. I hoped that Friend 1, after a time, would ask for me. Alas, Friend 1 did not. 2 hours later (or more, most likely) here I sit. My person wandered back and forth several times, talking. Pacing. Then went out on the porch and closed the door.

There they sit, and here I am. Friend 1 and I, no longer connect I guess. At least not on Friend 1’s part. Or maybe I was never that important. It hurts. Outside the friendship, and depth goes on without me. And not that it wouldn’t have happened other places, other times, other ways, but it seems harder for it to be on my porch. And I am lonely. I feel I have lost something so important to me. One person I counted on to be “mine” and understand in a way like no other. One person I counted on to be there to listen to me. But now my best friend (of once-upon-a-time), and my person (of now and forever) are there without me. And I am here. And I feel alone, adrift, and unconnected. Because, really, now, I’ve lost a part of myself.