Growing Away

This cold morning, I am listening to sad music and mourning the friendships I have lost. Some of them, I could probably find if I looked hard enough. But most of them are so well hidden in the camouflages of time passage, that we wouldn't see what we once were together even if we crashed into one another on top of our old stomping grounds. Instead we would talk about what has happened since we have become strangers. We would decide that we should meet up soon, but neither person would have the full intention to follow through, to call, to email or even to purposely see that person ever again. We may even avoid one another, simultaneously sneak out opposite side doors of the grocery store we are both in at the same time, ducking like cowards into parked cars, bathroom stalls and pausing trains. Scared of our inability to deal with growing up and growing away.

Perhaps I am blaming others when really it is all my fault. It was and is my carelessness. I did not put them in safe places. I should have been more organized. If I was more organized, I would not have lost them. But I was busy and when I am busy, my things pig pile in shambled dresser drawers and boxes of unopened bills, bent photos, reread letters, pants that no longer fit, sticky notes and dried flowers. And when too much time goes by and it is warm outside, I clean. This is usually when I decide what to keep and who to throw away. Because the warm sun brings optimism for a new beginning and blinds me from my present lonely middle and my future dwindling end.

Life is like a box of chocolates, Tom Hanks once poignantly pointed out on a park bench in an Oscar winning performance, you never know what you're going to get. A sugar rush. An explosion of drippy raspberry filling. Five pounds clinging desperately to your hips. A sharp tooth ache. A momentary distraction that can quiet city traffic and even the nightly news. But it isn't only what you get that matters. It is how well you preserve and savor the good chocolates (the ones with coconut or peanuts or caramel). Freeze them. You can freeze them. Or you can just eat them more slowly. I had never thought to freeze anything because I had always eaten everything too fast. I'd barely chew, let alone enjoy the comfort of a mouth full of sugar and cacao.


I'm going to get organized. Figuratively organized (my actual dresser will never keep my clothes folded past laundry day). I'll keep in touch with everyone. Never lose another friend to Time.




What am I saying? I am a clumsy, lazy mess. I won't do that.


I'll take smaller bites. That's what I'll do. Enjoy whatever piece of sweetness I have melting between my fingers at the moment.

Yeah, I can do that.