"Absence make her heart grow fonder"

Warning, emotional rant and guaranteed profanity to follow. 

Sometimes life blind-sides you with things you could never imagine happening. The last year has offered me up a few of those situations. Mum being diagnosed didn't blind-side me. I felt it coming. I didn't want to believe it, but when she told me she had found a lump and was having tests I knew it was going to be cancer. I think she did too. That was tough, but workable. We didn't have any choice but to fight it. And we fought it, and Mum vanquished the bastard. It was hard, no doubt. 

These days it's not huge scary things like cancer that get me worked up. It's the little things. Little things, that were once big, amazing, heart warming things. Friendships.

It makes me sad to think that I once was so close with a lot of people I still call friends, but barely know anymore. How did I go from sharing every waking moment with these people, every laugh and every cry, to going weeks, months and years without talking to them?

I know you've heard it before. Hell, we've probably all used them before. Every one is just so busy with work and study. Eventually we all have to grow up and lead our own lives. These to me, are just excuses.

At what point in the latter years of our teens, did our closest friendships stop being everything to us? Because if you ask me, the older we get, the more we are going to need the friends we made as teenagers. We have history together. We made history together. We've seen each other through some of the worst times of our lives. And we have created the best memories of our youth that we will hold dear forever. At a time in life that is awkward, everyone is struggling to define identity, these sorts of friends loved each other for who each person truly were.

There are some friends that will leave or lives, but still keep in touch. Some friendships are short stories and some Epic Novels. Everyone has at least one of those friends in their life, that they know will always be there. You can just feel it. Not unlike romantic love, when you know, you just know. 

With this thought in mind, these friendships are almost like a marriage of souls, but with unspoken vows. These friends, promise to have and to hold each other, for better or for worse, for
richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish;
from this day forward, for as long as you both shall live? care. "Say what?"

Well just like romantic love, friendships only last for as long as the two parties want them too. Stop trying and stop caring and pretty soon things will fall apart. Sadly, not unlike romantic love, it hurts like a bitch. 

Please think twice before you decide to not reply to that email, or to return a call. It only takes a few minutes to keep in touch. With all this technology we really have no excuses. It's really not worth compromising the love and support you have in your friends, the family you have chosen yourself.     

 

We were once close, weren't we?

Or does my memory fail to flow?

I've become a faded dolly, 

Just a girl you used to know

Once like puzzle pieces

All different, but fit together

Love, trust and honesty

It seems, too good to last forever

You've happily found a new chest

Filled to the brim with brand new bits,

shiny, sparkly, plastic and cool

performing new and exciting tricks

Now what are we left with?

A wagon with three wheels

Wondering where you fell off

And if you realise how it feels

Absence, they say,

it makes the heart grow fonder

Measured in miles or minds?

I am really starting to wonder.