26 March 2004

I saw an old friend of mine last night.

No, that's not quite right.

Last night, I saw somebody who isn't biologically related to me, but who is family to me. I'm rather non-specific about my criteria for "family," but I am rather particular about who gets included. I have many friends. Anybody can have friends. Its much harder to find family.

So, I saw him last night, for the first time in about two and a half years. We'd lost touch with each other for that long.

So, this friend of mine took his hat off for a few minutes as we were walking down the street. It was a horrible, shitty, soaking-wet kind of day, so I was kind of trying to keep my eyes toward the sidewalk. (...it's not as easy as it looks in the movies, having four eyes in the rain...) But I looked up at my friend, and I saw something that absolutely shocked me. I mean, took the breath right out of me. It's hard as hell to startle me, much less astonish me, but that's what happened. My friend has these little patches of silver hair at his temples. Like, noticeable ones.

I was too shocked to cry, but I sort of felt like crying. Not over the hair in particular. It actually looked pretty good. But it really struck me that we hadn't seen each other in two and a half YEARS. Hadn't even spoken on the phone or emailed; we'd completely lost touch. And here I was, walking down the street with my friend, and it felt like absolutely nothing had changed, like we were gonna get some coffee and talk about stuff that would appall my father, like we were just a couple of kids just hangin' out... And for the first time, it occurred to me that people's bodies grow up and turn into adults, regardless of whether or not they retain the capability of remaining as interesting as they were as younger people.

And what made me feel like crying was that I had missed that transition from dark hair to silver hair. Imagine what else has happened that I've missed... Not just big things, rites of passage, but little things, too... Three winters and two summers... How many cups of coffee is that? How many sarcastic remarks? How many drawings on napkins, how many weird stories...?

I've missed those forever. Like I missed seeing the hair change... I actually felt this real tightness in my chest, this real pain, when I realized that.

But I became all the more determined to keep those who are close to me, close to me. Fuck this, "oops, I moved at the same time you did and we lost contact..." That's NOT an acceptable excuse. There is NO acceptable excuse.

And that's all... There's no excuse for losing the people you love.

Running on about four hours of sleep. I just couldn't get to sleep last night. I lay and stared at the ceiling. I sat at the computer and stared at the screen. My eyes are all crusty and shit now, like I was weeping in my sleep or something, but I'm pretty sure I wasn't. My dreams were all okay.

Listening to Cat Power at the moment. I really only like a couple of her songs. I'm listening to those.

I'm tired. Going to go vegetate in front of the television...

~Helena*