Growing up I had a very good friend. We had a number of classes together and spent time outside of school as well. I wouldn't say that we were inseparable by any means, but we enjoyed each others company and never fell victim to the awkward silences that speak volumes about the underlying differences between people. Time inevitably progressed and there was nothing we couldn't talk about. Some things were still left unsaid, but only because the most important things have a way of making themselves irrelevant. There was one particular encounter that always stuck with me. In the moment it seemed like any other evening in June, just another insignificant piece of a mosaic that made up my life after graduation. We went to the beach. Not the sand beach mind you, the kind of beach where the concrete runs right up to the high tide and when the tide is low a landscape of jagged, barnacle covered rocks is exposed. As a child I'd go to this same beach to over turn rocks in search of small crabs, and the occasional large one, wearing shorts and saltwater sandals. In this particular situation we just sat on a bench and looked out over the Olympic Mountains as the sun fell slowly below their peaks. We talked about people and life and nothing. I didn't know it when we parted ways, I should have, but we wouldn't see each other for a long time. I've thought about the park bench more than I'd care to admit. In the following years we didn't see each other but for a brief moment when my mind couldn't handle itself much less the seemingly simple task of interacting with those close to me. I thought of them from time to time and how things might have been different, if the circumstance were different, if they were different, but mostly if I were different, a thought I entertain all too often. I used to tell people that there was nothing in my life that I'd done that I could regret because I liked the person I was and wouldn't want to change that. The truth is that hated parts of what I'd become but was too afraid to admit that to anyone, and even more afraid to admit that to myself. In my life I've spent so much time wondering what other peoples impressions of me were that I rarely stopped to ponder my impression of myself. It seemed like something that I shouldn't have to think about. Something that should always be right. I've learned that isn't true at all. We ran into each other again, nearly ten years later. We drank cold beers in the summer smog of our old neighborhood, the cars passing by only yards away while bands, that probably should have stayed in garages, performed in the streets. The conversation was trivial to say the least, but not in the way we'd talk about nothing before. It wasn't the kind of nothing where everything exists between the words but the kind of small talk that you'd make with a coworker or teacher, a hollow nothing. But even within that conversational void you could hear echos of the past. We saw each other casually at various events after that, birthday parties or celebratory events. It happened so gradually overtime I can't even say exactly when things changed, but they did. It struck me one day while sitting at my desk, it was as if the last decade never happened, like we'd always been friends. It seems sometimes that life goes out of it's way to make sure some things don't last. Then there are some friendships that, no matter how your life plays out, will always come back to you. You can call it fate, destiny, divine intervention, zah-mah-ki-bo, or whatever your heart desires, I'm just glad that it exists.
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