Sponsor me in the 2005 MS Walk! Why? Read here.
Thanks to Tali, I now know that I'm living in just the right place:
American Cities That Best Fit You: |
65% Boston |
65% Chicago |
60% New York City |
60% Philadelphia |
55% Miami |
The question(s) of the day, folks:
1. Do you have friends that you've known forever and who continue to be your friends, more by sheer force of history than by anything you actually have in common or currently do together?
2. If such a friend is obviously having big-time, serious issues in her life, what do you do? I mean, if you've only talked to her a few times a year in the past decade, and she hints around the fact that there's some Big Bad in her life, but she resists any real effort made by those around her to try and help--what do you do? Do you push? Do you back off and let her wallow in her own sorrow? Do you just continue along like you have for the past ten years and pretend like you know nothing?
Friendships are hard. No--that's not true, entirely. Some friendships are very easy. The friends you've had forever, or whom you've known for a short time but it feels like forever, the ones you can not talk to for a week or a month or six months, and who start a conversation with you like it was yesterday, and the ones you talk to every day, or at least several times a week, and who you never run out of discussion topics with. The ones you can easily spend six hours with and then look at your watch and wonder how it got to be THAT late. These are easy friendships.
But they're not all that easy. Some are huge amounts of work. Some leave you feeling worn out and used up after every encounter. Some bring on waves of guilt. Some just become a habit you don't know how to break.
At what point do you cut your losses and move on without them, the friends who bring you down? And how, if you do that, do you get past the guilt of leaving them behind? Or should you not leave them behind? Are you bound by the terms of your friendship to remain friends?
When did my life get so damn *adult*? And how do I undo it?
I remember standing in my first Sharon bedroom, listening to my mom talk to my new friend Damian's mom on the phone. We'd met in class--second grade--and instantly loved eachother the way only second graders can. I'd invited him to come over and play, and he'd accepted without hesitation. Neither of us considered our parents in the matter. We just assumed they'd be fine with it.
For a year, Damian and I were best, best friends. Then they went home. His dad was a visiting professor somewhere in Boston, and the year-long tenure was up. He, his parents and his twin younger brother and sister packed up and went back to Arizona. I was heartbroken. We wrote letters back and forth for years--I still have some of them. In the end, I lost him. I'm still sad about it (So if you, or someone you know, is the Damian Parkinson whose family lived in Sharon, Massachusetts for a year in second grade, email me, okay?). But it faded because it stopped being easy. And that fading was natural.
I guess that if you carry a friendship long enough, out of childhood and into "adulthood," at some point you just own it. You've been friends so long you can't be anything else.
Now I'm rambling. Feeling a bit unfocused, I guess.
The first hole is done! One more day and the Digging Man is history!
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