Is it strange or is it pathetic to find friends that they have not spoken in 20 years?
None of that seems significant. None of it should be.
And I’m babbling again.
I know.
The problem, for me at least, is that I cannot hear the word “old friend” without thinking of a buddy that I have not seen in decades. Would you ever think of someone without wondering if that person thinks of you?
I have once been holding on to memories of this long lost buddy that I was so afraid that one day I may not be able to hold on to this any longer and till the day when it slips away; so much of my social lubricant - an easy slip off.
If I have a chance to live again I would like to relive my past when I was 12 years old. It was the best moments of my life till the day I graduated. It was the biggest crushed I had and they called it puppy love and that love would mean the world to me.
I was so sure, so absolutely certain, that it was meant for us but then again we were too young to know. Even after a broken heart, it was years before I ever entertained the idea that anyone else had ever possibly loved the way we had. It started when we both were at twelfth and it is the twelfth of never.
But that puppy love is a fundamental part of my history.
Now, decades later, sitting in my studio apartment listening to songs of Donny Osmond, my chest physically burns as I struggle for my next breath. I have to stop for a moment and refocus on the screen, find my bearings again in a wave of emotion that threatens to crush me if given free reign.
Why am I still feeling the touch as though it was a playback of the past?
Why am I holding on the memories? Why am I holding on to this damn tight … something that should be so… meaningless?
I was only 17 years old and that was the last of the memories that were made.
I would be lying if I said the name didn’t spring to the back of my mind while I told you about my other half.
I feel so pathetic and the other person with memories that I’m still holding on is not.
That old flame is sane and whole and healthy. Not sure if the same of me as it is of the opposite, aching for closure or curious. Not sure if I’m the only one that is holding on to a handful of memories. While my puppy love is such an integral part of my story, I am nothing more than a footnote to the other. A face to be named in an old year book or school picture at best.
Ouch.
There it is.
The pain that cuts the deepest.
The thing you can spend a lifetime trying to avoid, and find yourself leveled by it anyway. The knowledge that you cared more. That you were the needy one. That you were the one who loved more, who held on more, who remembers the details that are insignificant. Forgettable. Maybe forgotten.
That the words “Always. And Forever.” said in exactly that way don’t hold a deeper meaning. The Ray Conniff music that stops you in your tracks is just an old country song for everyone else but me.
‘If you leave me now, you take away the biggest part of me; you take away the very part of me….how could we let it slipped away’.
That all the inside secrets and jokes and pet names and symbols that you remember as clearly as the day they meant everything to you - are completely forgotten by the person you shared them with. That the more you remember, the more ridiculous you look.
I just rest and listen to the Ray Conniff singers playing, ‘Send in the clowns’ makes me appreciate such beautiful arrangements. Nostalgic and bittersweet at times flash across my mind.
Don't you love farce?
My fault I fear.
I thought that you'd want what I want.
Sorry, my dear.
But where are the clowns?
Quick, send in the clowns.
Don't bother, they're here.
Isn't it rich?
Isn't it queer,
Losing my timing this late
In my career?
And where are the clowns?
There ought to be clowns.
Well, maybe next year.
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