PEOPLE have a habit of disappearing around me. I’m sure it happens to most people, but for a variety of reasons, I seem to be particularly affected. From childhood friends to extended family, I’ve had quite a few people just completely vanish from my life.
If I’m being honest, I have to admit that I probably shoulder a lot of the blame for this unhappy phenomenon. I’m useless at keeping in touch with people. I have a hard enough time connecting with the people I have around me everyday, so sadly, any sort of distance between myself and a friend or a loved one more than likely means it’s curtains for that relationship. I barely stay in touch with many university friends even though I only left campus three short years ago. It’s been years since I’ve seen many of the friends I had in high school, and I’m pretty sure there are playground pals I had in primary school whose very existence have long ago faded from memory.
For the most part, I don’t notice these disappearances right away. It’s a gradual process that begins with a cessation of physical contact, usually a result of increased physical distance. In some cases, even when the person is far away, there’s an attempt at staying in touch via sms or email (I rarely call) and more recently, social websites like Facebook. But then suddenly you realise that it’s been weeks since you’ve made contact, and at that point you feel so guilty it’s easier (and more cowardly) to just avoid that person altogether, promising yourself that you’ll make it up to them on their birthday or Christmas, their funeral, at least. Weeks turn into months which turn into years before you accept that it’s finally happened. You’re estranged.
But it’s all a part of growing up. Adult friendships are not like high school friendships. I’m not going to have a constant clique of 50 hanging around. I don’t think I want to at this point in my life. Like most of us, I’ll hopefully end up with a small circle of good, true friends: a few from high school, a few from university, a few from work and various other places. We may not talk everyday or even every week because everybody is busy, but these are the people that if I called them in the middle of the night and said “I need you” they would help me bury the body, to borrow an expression from a good friend.
It hurts when you first realise that you have fallen out of touch with a friend, but the universe seems to have a way of putting people where they need to be when they need to be there. If the friendship is meant to be, you will see that person again some day and pick right up where you left off.
