After being away in college for a year, I made a phone call that summer to an old friend from high school. I knew that I should have tried to make an effort to keep in touch with her sooner because we were quite close before. But a friendship takes two and that was our first phone call. I remember that I happily shared things with her about my first year in college, but when it came time for her to share, she went quiet. She simply said that she felt like I was now a complete stranger and that it would be too much to explain. So what can you say to something like that? I was speechless. I apologized and told her that I'm sorry that she felt that way and how things turned out. Inside I felt like part of me was crushing. I never thought that her idea of friendship would be so different from my own.
Sure, time can weaken a relationship, but I don't think that it can completely erase the experiences and memories with someone into complete strangers. Or at least this is how it is for me. Life takes you to different places and you get lost sometimes with certain people. But when our paths do cross again, these moments make me happy that we've found one another again no mater how long it may have been. And even if our paths were to never cross, I would never think of them as a complete stranger. I would say that was my friend from .....whatever that is.
Maybe I'm just low maintenance when it comes to friendships. I don't need to constantly hang out or talk to someone on a weekly/monthly/etc. schedule. And if you need this from me then it would probably annoy the hell out of me that you'd even expect this unless you're going through tough times or something then I would of course be there for you. We'll talk and hang out when we can.
Friendship in the middle of the Dessert
