There is a feeling which arises from slumber every time I see your most recent photo, old friend… this sensation of being completely transfixed by your beauty and your blossoming personality.
Yet as I pull my reluctant eyes away from your face and look within and behind – at me now and us back then – that sensation morphs into something which makes me shift uncomfortably in my chair and heave a big sigh. And although, physically, I get up and make myself busy, there I still am – at the crossroads where we first began to grow apart.
Do I grieve because there is such a great distance lying between our homes now? Am I resentful of how much you’ve changed from who you used to be? Is it your happiness I crave for myself, or the mutual happiness in friendship I still believe we could have had?
How hard it is to distinguish between feelings! And to accept that sometimes old friends must be apart in order to grow wiser and stronger.
That most recent hug from a few years back, which wasn’t intended to be our last, may now seem to be just that. But, who knows? Maybe it isn’t after all. Right now, it appears as though we’ve dropped off each other’s map, fallen through cracks made by study, work, tiredness, and plain forgetfulness.
But we’ve grown. And one day we may again stand side-by-side. Tall.
Liv'n'Hope 