I can’t help it. I still look you up from time to time, grasp at the odd link, the rare audio clip, the strange rabbit hole that appears and sucks me in when I ponder that road that carried us away from each other.
I don’t miss you. I’m not sad about it. I think we’re better off. But I get curious, without real reason, and wonder what has happened since.
We were so young. We made such bad decisions with such earnestness, such dedication.
“Never wish for things to happen too soon,” he told me once. “The anticipation is the best part. Things are never as good as you expect them to be.”
At the time I thought he was crazy. But now I’m as old as he was when he said it to me.
Now I understand exactly what he meant.
“I wish I had met you sooner,” he said. “I missed so much.”
And then he kissed her in a way that reminded her how much she had missed, too.
“So, we were sitting at breakfast, and my friend said, ‘I get the idea there’s 10 percent of you that I’m seeing, and 90 percent that’s percolating beneath the surface,’” I said.
“He must have been smart to have noticed that,” he said.
“He’s not that smart,” I said. “That’s why he’s just a friend.”
“Yeah,” he said. “But he was smart enough to have breakfast with you.”
It would be much better if the last word was “No,” or “Out,” or “Done,” or “Goodbye.”
But there is no power left when the last word is,
“Please.”
Some friends ask favors. Some friends ask for an ear. Some friends ask for the secret recipe, and some friends take that recipe but forget to ever make the dish.
But some friends ask you to take terrifying steps down a rocky path, encourage you to put words out into the world you might never have thought to leave like breadcrumbs on your way. To that friend, I say thank you, because one year later*, these breadcrumbs remind me how tasty it is to put those words where others can see them.
* Happy anniversary, 100 Proof Stories…
I have three days of non-perishable food, a crank-powered flashlight, enough wine to numb me to all manner of disaster. I have a journal, many friends on speed-dial, and plenty of books I haven’t read. I know disintegration comes on slowly, like the earth peeling apart. I know, though, when the rupture happens, when the relationship experiences irreconcilable liquefaction, it cannot help but disorient and cause panic. So I’m prepared, ever-prepared, to say goodbye and erect all necessary perimeters around my heart at a moment’s notice.
100 Proof 