4/10/2006 - On Lost Friendship

I was thinking about this a lot. It seems like we're always told that parting ways is a natural event. Our paths cross, we go our seperate ways... most of the time we come back to each other, a lot of the time we don't.

I always wonder then, if it is such a natural thing, why it is so difficult for us. A person either leaves a hole in our hearts when they go, or else that hole heals up- and we're left with a vague memory that at some point, that person had a place in your heart. This fills me with confused nostalgia and I wonder how we could have become so unimportant to each other. Even though I shouldn't, I question whether I even know what love and friendship are. (Because I think, for some reason, that these things should be everlasting).

Either way it kind of doesn't feel so good. I don't know what my point was. I always try to find a point. Maybe the wounds don't heal as cleanly for a reason, maybe those conformational changes allow us to become something else and grow. I hope it's not the other way around, I hope it doesn't make us rigid and mean. I don't think it does. I think it can, but I don't think it does.

I think losing people allows us to better appreciate the people we have kept in our life. Some of my closest friendships are approaching the decade mark. I met people out camping who had been friends for 30 years.. much longer than I've been alive. It is an amazing thing, lasting friendship. It is a blessing.