The Problem with Friends

Last night I has the good luck to catch up with a good friend of mine. To say we have not seen each other in ages is an underestimation of the time that has passed. I was probably ten years younger and going through one of the trying periods of my life when I last saw this person. That is not to say I have not kept in contact and vice versa: the occasional email, phone call, and of course, the ever ubiquitous FaceBook. But it just is not the same as sitting in that friend's presence and talking, face to face.

And it was nice. There were moments where I just sat across from this person, looking at them, and realized how much I had missed them in my life. To say that I adore and genuinely love this person and always have - no matter the miles or the distance between us - is not an underestimation. And I realize that to have that type of friendship in one's life is rare, and I feel lucky that I can count him as one of those friends; a friend that always lingers on the mind and in the heart, a friend that changes us and changes with us, and a friend that will always be somehow in the very fabric of our being, no mater what time and circumstances lead to.

And having a friend like that sometimes means opening yourself to some hard truths. I had not realized before last night how fresh some of the wounds of the past year still are. There were so many times I could feel the tears well in my eyes as I recounted some of my most recent travails. As I told stories both old and new, I suddenly saw how much I had changed and how much things had changed me. I suddenly saw myself as someone that was very different from the girl who left home. The girl who went off and had her own adventures. And the girl who came back, only to realize that she just did not fit into anything anymore.

I am not sad for all these realizations - juts reflective. I think it is interesting that a decade ago, I don't think anyone would have predicted that this was the person I had become. And while I like to cling to that fact that I have not changed, that people from my primary school years can still recognize me in photos today, that is not true. I may look the same, have the same perfectly smile or eyes or laugh, but I am so different from who I thought I would be and I am so far from where I thought I would be. And I am coming to accept - that for better or for worse - I am, for once, at peace with the person that I am.