There are some people I see or hear from only every few years, without disrupting our friendship in any way – that is just how the time is organized.
I moved to the other side of the world, I’m not an especially good correspondent, I never talk on the telephone, I prefer to be alone most of the time – I presume that most failings in communication are my own, and thank those friends who do not take the distance and silence personally.
Certainly it does not bother me when other people act in the same way; if our relationship was based on singing together in a defunct chorus, or sitting around on stoops in a neighborhood I left six years ago, or more cryptic excursions, it makes sense that we have drifted. The sheer delight I feel when I see them again is genuine, and true, even when they do not reciprocate.
Last year I ran into Patrice on a sidewalk in Seattle and we only talked for about five minutes but the whole thing was a vivid and important part of my summer.
When I finally caught up with Dwayne at a party at the 19th Street House in Portland I marched over and exclaimed I miss you!
He looked away and answered I know.
We have too much history and genuine affection to abandon the friendship, even if he has relegated me to some kind of emotional deep freeze. I miss him, and I wish that the complications of life could bring us together instead of pushing us apart. If he chooses otherwise I would never impose myself. His choice is his own.
There are other stateside friends who, by virtue of the internet, remain connected on a daily and sometimes even hourly basis. As a direct result, I notice their absence more than I would the disappearance of the less technologically adept.
Sometimes there is a reason clearly defined or at least guessed at: I’ve been outrageous and offensive, I’ve cancelled a book contract, I’ve rejected a declaration of love. Other times, there is absolutely nothing – and that is when I get worried.
One of my devoted friends vanished a few months ago. No text messages, no social media, no nothing.
Given that I had not committed a discernible friendship crime, aside from being stuck here over the summer, I was actively distressed and wondering.
Recently the person in question finally sent a message: I’m in rehab.
Somewhere around my seventeenth birthday I decided that there was only room in my life for one junkie. That spot was claimed by my aunt until quite recently, and I have repelled all further offers with the defense of the quota system.
On the day of her funeral I allowed someone else to sneak up and grab the spot.
I’ve never paid much attention to addiction lore, literature, legerdemain. Yes, I grew up with junkies, and no, I won’t accept those transgressions and imputations as part of my life.
When this kind of thing is a normal part of your routine and history and you hear that someone with major chemical dependencies (and all the mental health problems that likely contributed to or expanded the condition) is in rehab, you think Oh, good, he/she is alive!
Or you think When will he/she die already? – depending on what you have invested in thoughts, dollars, and despair.
This friend has never hurt me in any way. In fact, he has adored and cajoled and enhanced my life. I am completely committed to supporting him and sticking around even when it isn’t easy.
Still, I did not and will not ask what precipitated this spell in rehab, and do not care if it was a minor slip-up, a major binge, or a transcontinental nightmare Bacchanal.
Instead I asked Will you still be able to vote?!
