Dear friend
I always said I should write more often. I regret that it's not under happier circumstances but, hey, what am I if not consistently inconsistent?
I remember, when I was a kid, an adult once told me that the friends we keep in school are not the friends you have when you grow up. I remember thinking “okay that may have been true in your day, but we have the internet now and we can stay connected”. We'll keep in touch right? We have MSN and MySpace, we'll always be friends.
Of course, they were right. It was never about the method of communication was it? It was that the people we meet in school are people we are almost forced to become friends with due to proximity. We'd spend 6-7 hours a day, 5 days a week, for pretty much 10 months out of the year, for 12 years straight, in a classroom of people who happen to live nearby and are in the same age bracket. We didn't necessarily choose our friends, our circumstance did.
Though through the naïvety of my younger self, this is something of which I remained blissfully unaware. "Such a thing will never happen to me and my friends, how could it? We're best buds for life!", I thought, due either in part to ignorance or denial (or perhaps a sprinkle of both.) But then we graduate. We do our GCSEs (or SATs if you're American) and leave mandatory education. It doesn't take long for the people you once called “friends for life” to drift ever further away. Some go to college, some get a job, and we all start to fill our minds with the responsibility of adults, erasing the moments we thought we'd cherish forever and never forget.
The thing is, I never forgot. Sure I went to college, went to university, got a job, and now I'm even back in university once again, but the echoes of my past continue to haunt me. And maybe that's okay. People grow, we have important things to do, we have responsibilities; but I myself cannot help but fixate on the moments that make life worth living at all. The cherished times I swore I'd never forget, and will continue to hold close to me until my dying breath. My happiest memories are not when I started university, the first time I moved out, nor the day I got my first car. Instead they live in the moments I shared with the people who were kind enough to let me be a part of their story at all. Staying out late at night and doing stupid teenage shit and pretending we call it “camping”. The falling in and out of love with people you swore were your “soulmate” at the time without understanding what a soulmate even is. The 4 a.m. drives out to the middle of nowhere, with no destination in mind - just music and company.
As we grow older, more experienced, and (hopefully) wiser, I pray that we do not forget the people we used to be. We were all, at one point, lost and confused teenagers trying to figure out what it is we're supposed to be doing. But it's in those moments - where we stop focusing on the future and take a moment to drive 50 miles away to a beach in the middle of the night with nothing but music and the sea air in your face - that life, this fleeting moment, matters.
You matter to me, friend. I hope I mattered to you too.