Sarah Morgan
It’s graduation season. You can hear the ballpoint pens on yearbooks now… “don’t ever change” and “HAKAS – have a kick-ass summer” and “KIT – keep in touch.” And it’s all very sweet and lovely. But it’s all kind of pretend, and even the people writing it kind of know it.
Pamie wrote about losing touch with old friends – and then one of the people she had been missing found her. It’s a nice story. But she moved a lot, apparently, which makes it kind of different. I mean, it’s sad to lose touch with people regardless. But if nothing big happened… if you just kind of stopped talking to them… or they just kind of stopped talking to you… or if you can’t really remember which it was but in any case you just stopped talking… it’s almost sadder, I think. At least if you have a big life change you can point to that as the reason and accept it.
If not, though, it’s pretty sad. Not because you exactly miss that person in your life – if you missed them so much, then you’d have tried hard enough to keep them there. Anyway, you wouldn’t have anything to say to each other anymore beyond the awkward catching-up what-have-you-been-up-to stuff and then the more awkward reminiscing stuff, where you realize you have nothing in common anymore. But even though you don’t want them in your life anymore exactly, it’s just kind of a shame, somehow, when some things change and you realize they aren’t there.
Sort of unplanned moving on. When you decide to move on, that’s one thing. But when the plates move and the sun sets and the clouds breeze by and people who were your friends aren’t anymore, it’s a bit sad no matter why or whose fault or what reason. Nobody’s fault; just different times.
Weird, is all. Just weird.
