How do I begin to feel guilty enough for failing a friendship of four and a half years?
In September of 1999, I started undergrad, and I met some truly wonderful people. Some of the first people I met in the first week of classes became fast friends for our entire undergraduate time. We were with each other through the beginnings and endings of our first really adult relationships, through the stress and uncertainty of intensive study, and through the limbo of the transition from undergrad to life beyond.
In the fall after fourth year, I sublet a room in the townhome two undergrad friends were renting. Living with friends can be...odd. The relationship as it previously existed must be replaced with something new, something different. And the concern can be that what once was is lost, and that what now is, is inferior.
When my sublet was up, I moved into another house with different roommates in a different neighbourhood downtown. And I didn't call. I never called my friends with whom I had lived. I honestly didn't think they wanted to hear from me, and I cannot, for the life of me, remember why I felt that way. No, I do, because I always feel that way when I leave a place, a home, a job. Call it esteem issues, call it baggage I carry with me from highschool: I never called, and I don't know if I ever gave them my new number. I was newly engaged, finishing up last undergrad classes, and I just failed to do what a friend should do.
Ever since I have missed these friends, one with whom I was - I thought - close friends since the second day of classes back in our first year. And I have missed her terribly.
Just today, I found her blog. I have been reading it, from it's first entry penned some three months after I moved out, trying to catch up on my friend's life. And I have felt so badly for having failed her. In one post, she writes that she worries that she is incapable of forming lasting friendships with women. Alyson, if you ever chance to read this, please know that you did, and I valued our time together, all of our times together, and I love you and have missed you since I last saw you. And that I am so terribly sorry for having lost touch with you, I cannot fully express it.
I think that you should contact her--leave her a comment on her blog, maybe. It doesn't hurt to try and it's possible that it would be good for both of you.
ReplyDeleteI lose track of so many people, and I do wonder what has happened to many of them.