i spoke with an old friend today. once upon a time, i fancied we would be life partners. it was not to be. he has married and now has three children and a lovely life in the south west. we are still friends, albeit at distance. now and again, we meet on the chat channels and exchange updates with one another. he is always happy to talk with me, always tells me that he misses me. i have the sense that he thinks of me as a path untaken.
i think of it now because i have another friend who also is married with a child and who has, in the not too distant past, said a very similar thing. he too, begins the slow walk to greater distance and i try to take it in stride, but it is difficult. so much of my life seems to be this manner of apartness and melancholy for always being years too late and far too lacking.
i have, i think, grown tired of the feeling that my lot in life is to be the distant comfort and that i shall never have more than comfort from a distance.
i don’t know if you can ‘hear’ the difference in these words. to be sure, i have written them before. usually in anger, sometimes in despair. neither of which are present in this moment. instead, a steady and increasingly determined feeling that this will not be the ‘rest of my life’. don’t get me wrong, i love my friends and i love these two more than i probably should. one of them, beyond all reason and that is not a thing that will disappear for some time, if ever.
i struggle with it. i am also laughing at myself. you would think that after the fellow in the south west, so many years ago, i would not be so willing to let myself get snared by this particular trap. as always, just when i think i’m ‘safe’ from it, i look down and find myself gripped once more.
i didn’t plan it this way. in fact, at the onset, as soon as it seemed apparent the possibility was there, i set about all manner of declaration and insistence that our feet should remain clear of ‘that path’ in every way. i suppose i may as well have saved my breath for all the good it did me.
there is a certain kind of nourishment in both of these friends that i have been starved for my entire life. i could no more pass up the chance to experience them as i could stop breathing. even in full knowledge that delights savored in one moment would be despairs endured in another. i suppose this makes me something of a fool. only a fool would engage knowing there is no possibility of more than the eventual despair.
so, yes, a fool. i shrug for it and do not beat myself. i needed the things received and i needed to be able to give them as well. the weight of this moment is not so heavy as it might once have been. i credit a deeper understanding of myself for it…. and perhaps a kinder intent toward myself as well.
i am drinking woodbridge zinfandel tonight. the first i have allowed myself to indulge since about 2004. i drink and i think. i find the wine keeps the feedback away. my thoughts are detached, which is a relief.
in review, i find that in the last three months, i have gone from almost daily contact to being fortunate to have as much as a ping. i said this would be the way of it, but i would have liked to have been proven wrong.
ah well. it is good to know they have a full and enjoyable life. i work on not feeling angry that i cannot be more a part of it. a silly thing to expect really. i was never allotted the place of a friend in reality, only in the corner. and i let that be as it was and knew beyond all doubt this would be the outcome. i should have insisted. lessons learned are never bad things, i suppose.
i am, of course, gearing up for the casting off. chuckling a bit grimly to hold these expectations and shake them into a nice, even stack before setting them into the fireplace of life. it is odd how i continue to find myself saddled with them in this area. i rarely have them elsewhere. it is good not to be overly pained to find them again, nor for the notion of setting them into the hearth.
i am learning, albeit slowly. my own attempts to keep a regular interaction going end here… all ‘fair warnings’ along the way given, unheeded (not unexpectedly so), i take the same lesson learned in the south west and set it firmly in the front of my mind and chuckle for my stubbornness. i’ll get it right, some day, and in the meantime, if i can stand here at the moment of full circle without tears, i count it progress.
the spasms of the last month are resolved, the anger is done away, the wistfulness is fading, and that can only mean one thing…. time to do more than speak of it. time to move on.
a few loose ends to be tidied, and then, the return to passivity.
there is a difference between a farewell and a goodbye. from this distance, with nothing more than warm thoughts and peace, it is time for the farewell.
at end of day
no words to say
just smile, saying fare thee well, friend
lush and green paths
tranquility
wished to you
with a smile