Sunday, September 11, 2011

Mourning Friendships Past

In my life I've experienced a lot of things that hurt deep down inside:  Being rejected by someone I was in love with.  Realizing that those I care for have been beaten down and defeated by time and misfortune.  Losing things I held dear and realizing that my hopes and dreams were being forced onto a new and harder path.

However few things hurt worse than losing a friend.  Friends come in all shapes and sizes, from close friends to brief friendships to intimate partnerships you think will last forever.  But they don't last forever.  Friendships seldom do; and losing one of them always makes me feel like I failed in some way.

I've lost friendships for a lot of reasons.  Most due to a simple growing gap in time or distance.  Occasionally I lose one due to choices I made, for good or ill.  Those are the hardest, because I know things actually could have gone differently.  I try not to have regrets and I realize that the choices I made were what I thought was best at the time, and in most cases I was right in thinking so; but nevertheless that friend is gone because of something I did or didn't say or did or didn't do.  I could have saved the friendship by making some sacrifice or choosing differently, but I did not.

This is a part of life and I know it.  Friendships come and go like anything else.  But as someone who yearns for connections with others, I can't help but feel like these are missed opportunities.  If I had just tried a little bit harder....  If I had just found the right words to say....  If I had found some magical way to bring an end to the conflict....

I didn't.  Because I didn't, I have lost those I once valued; who I once trusted and who once trusted me.

So today I mourn friendships past.  I mourn the good times we had; the laughter and the hope and the sharing of what made each of us unique, and worth each other's time.  I mourn the way we stood together in bad times and relied on each other when the chips were down.  I mourn a future where we still stand together, where we still share those hopes and that laughter; a future that will now never come to pass.

Those times are gone, and for various reasons those people are gone from me.  That part of my life will never return.  As the title of the blog says, I have to move forward.  Regardless of where we stand now, even if it be on opposing sides of a disagreement our actions brought into being, regardless of that I thank them for what they gave me, and I wish them the best down the road.  It's a road I once wished we could share, but in the end...I suppose we all walk our own road, don't we?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Sometimes we are better for leaving those who hurt us in the past...but the memory of them is haunting.