It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesteday

Earworm, sorry.

I'm not sure if anyone can tell this, but it's just after 6am in New Brunswick and I'm wide awake, blogging. That alone should give you some indication of where I am mentally. I've already been awake for an hour.

This has been a very strange week for me. It's like I've gone back in time eight years.

First a chat and email from a very old friend, and then last night.

I got a surprising email yesterday from an old friend of mine with whom I went to university. He and his wife were coming into town for the evening and were getting together with a group of friends of ours whom I hadn't seen in years. I hadn't even seen him since we graduated from school. Ryan, I know you'll never read this, but I really hope it doesn't take six years next time.

Seeing old friends is always good, and always a bit sad. Ryan didn't actually expect me to show up, and when I did he was so pleasantly surprised, it just warmed my heart. Around the tables, I saw so many familiar yet unfamiliar faces. It makes me sad that I live in the same city as many of these people and didn't even know it.

People are never quite the way you remember them if you don't see them often enough. On the rare occasions when I do run into an old friend, am I the only one who just wants to grab them and hug them close, in the hopes that it will light a tiny flame under all of our old memories and somehow take us back to a forgotten moment, if even for a minute?

I dreamed of one of these old friends last night, one I haven't seen in years. We had a falling out and we stopped speaking. We didn't make amends before he rode off into the sunset to continue living his life. Now we'll never make amends and my heart aches for that to happen. He is someone who was so close to me, then suddenly gone. It truly makes my heart hurt.

There are so many other friends who weren't there last night, at least not physically, but talking about them really stirred up a lot of emotion for me. They might as well have been there, as far as my heart is concerned.

Take some time today to contact an old friend, or a friend you don't get to see as often as you'd like to, or someone you don't think you still have a relationship with. Give them that feeling of a reminiscent hug; try to rebuild a bridge that burned a long time ago.

We might not always have these chances.