Old Friends

I did something today that I've been needing to do for a while. Something that I kept putting off until a later time. Today presented the perfect opportunity, so I just went ahead and did it. No I am not talking about laundry or a shower. I picked up the phone and called an old friend. I said a few posts back that I need to do better at staying in touch, so consider that step one of my resolution.

It was this guy's birthday, and I hadn't talked to him in almost 2 years. I don't like to put names on here, so I won't, but some of you will know who he is. He was my best friend growing up. I want to say that from something like 4th or 5th grade until our freshman year of college we were real close. Best of friends for many of those years. Something happened at some point though.

He was the kind of guy who always had to have a girlfriend. I have no problem with that, I realize that there are people like that out there in this world. I wish I had more girlfriends to tell you the truth. This wasn't a jealousy thing though. It got to the point where I felt I was more of a friend out of convenience. When he didn't have a girlfriend, we'd hang out. When he did have a girlfriend, we would still hang out here and there, but he never wanted to go out and do stuff with the guys. We slowly grew apart during our senior year of high school, but still were good enough of friends that we decided that we'd go to college in Corpus Christi together.

I've heard several people say before that you should never live with one of your good friends. Only trouble can come of it. That's not completely true, but a little bit so. After a year of living with this guy, I think we were both pretty sick of each other. I think we were both each other's security blanket when we went off from high school, "Into the Great Wide Open" (gotta' love Tom Petty). By the time our freshman year was over, I think we had outgrown each other. I feel that some of my habits bothered him, and some of his habits bothered me. I remember the conversation we had when I told him I was going to transfer up to Tech. I told him that I didn't think I was going to return. He said he was upset about that, and I told him, "hey man, we're best friends, we'll talk all the time". After moving up to Lubbock, I can say that the don't ever live with your close friends thing has some validity to it, but on the large scale isn't exactly true.

With this friend of mine and me, one thing led to another and two friends didn't stay in touch. I guess that happens to everyone. By the time they get back on the same wavelength, they've changed so much that they aren't as compatible as they used to be. I think that may have been what happened to us.

Well I called him tonight. It is his 25th birthday, and every year, I always remember this day. This is the first year since my second year of college that I've called him on this day. It was a bit of an awkward conversation. Nothing bad, just weird when someone you used to be so close to seems so much different than you remember. I'm sure that it was felt on both sides of the phone.

We made plans to get together for a beer or two sometime. That's somewhat ironic, because that's part of the reason the distance arose between the two of us. Perhaps it'll be the thing that leads to the bridge being rebuilt to friendship.

"I can't imagine just how it might have been, growing up without my old friend."
-MDM