Old folks are nostalgic obsessive compulsive memory hoarders. We gather trinkets and receipts and movie tickets. We laminate letters, frame pictures and rarely delete text messages.
That’s how we end up with a roomful of absent friends!
So we rattle and sieve and sort them. Not to discard any, but make more room for more. Just in case.
Rearranging our old friends, we end up with three categories:
Soul Mates
There’s this set of old friends whom we take for granted to trust. We exchanged vows or friendship rings. Situation just brought us together. And situation set us apart too. We separated amicably, and had very little conflicts of interest, beside the shared domesticity and heart-to-heart conversations.
Nowadays, anytime we start a conversation with this set of friends, it’s as if we never separated. Time and space has lost its power over our relationship. Because the soul is permanent, and there is a permanent home for this friend in our hearts.
Bless this friendship.
Wishful Thoughts
Then there’s this set of old friends whom we knew very well but not THAT well. We know about most of their better sides. We don’t mind the hangups that we’re aware of.
Nowadays, we are comforted with maybe: We long to meet and converse again. And we procrastinate because we’re afraid that, by meeting, some of that magical idealism would break into reality. So we settle with “we’ll see” and whatifs. For the time being.
Tread carefully here.
Past Flames
And then there’s this set of friends who have burned than we bargained for. They make up the sorest of unrealized dreams. (Which was it, money or sex?) Whatever the past between us, long or brief, we can’t bear their presence without that tinge of discomfort and unnamable WHATIFs.
Nowadays, they fill our most absurd fantasies. Unredeemable no matter how much time and space have passed, we know that there is more harm than good in indulging those fantasies.
Don’t go there.
