Friendships

We spent the entire weekend together - all 3 of us - from Friday afternoon until late afternoon on Monday. Its kind of a big deal as those kinds of weekends are few and in-between lately unless we're out of town (so Chris has no choice haha), but we somehow scored that this past weekend. Yesterday, we got to have a nice, long & long-overdue lunch with some old friends who were in town from SF for the week. Chris has known Arliss and Celeste for years and I was grandfathered into the deal, haha. It was nice to catch up and Amelia finally got to meet Uncle Arliss.

I don't know if our lunch spurred it, but I had a dream last night. It was a little weird, but if you know me well, you know that I have bizzaro dreams anyway. Bear with me. Anyway, an old friend I used to be pretty close to ended up deliberately backstabbing me in this dream. I knew I was dreaming at this point, but it didn't stop the heartbreak that I felt even within the dream.

I woke up thinking about this old friend and about how we've grown really far apart. I don't even let her know when I'm in town when I go back to MN anymore. I don't know why. I guess in a way, I almost chalk it up to "We're in different life stages now and it might be awkward." Its weird because we used to be able to talk about anything, and now, I'm pretty sure we're not even Facebook friends (I know, the gage to everything. Those who know me really well might start looking through my Facebook friends list to see if its you, HAHA). I don't really know what happened and I guess on a certain level, I'm a little afraid to find out the why's and how's.

I remember someone once telling me a long time ago - about my little group of friends - how most people will grow out of a friendship, just like some relationships. How "it just happens," and "you'll see." I remember how upset that made me and how I didn't imagine then how life could ever get in the way of us being there for each other or even us staying the same. Did he jinx me? Cause somehow, it happened. I can't pinpoint where, but it did somewhere along the way.

When I got married and moved out to SoCal, I thought about my old friends whom I didn't really even have that much contact with while I was planning my wedding and remember telling myself, well, here's a new chapter and we're probably all just busy with where we're at now. It didn't lessen the hurt, but it made me think that in some way, I was forgiving them for "not being there." Our friendship went through boyfriends, other friends, high school, teenage stuff, etc. but somehow changed as we broadened our horizons for ourselves.

I get that people change, grow up. We're all free to do so. And encouraged to do so. And called to do so. But I can't help but think that maybe I didn't try hard enough to make the friendship last while we were both changing. I envy people I know who have long time friends who have grown with each other or can pick up where they left off.

The dream I had last night made me think that maybe I wasn't fully "over" how or even what happened and maybe even haven't forgiven her for things that she might not even be aware of. I have no doubt that she might see this. And she might know it's her. But I'm okay with that now. And I'm working on forgiving her. And myself.

Our friendship got me through a lot and even if just for that little moment in time, we were friends and it was great. And I think we both know that even now, if we really needed one another, we'd never say no.