A Question Between Friends
A friend of mine recently married a lifelong friend and more recent partner. They married after his return from Iraq. I found out on Facebook.
Have I failed you?
His marriage was not the first that I discovered only because of our digital disease. And these are not casual friends, but people I would not hesitate to invite to my day of union with the woman I love. People who I have grown close to and shared such wondrous moments.
Not a phone call, letter, or even an email…Have I failed these people?
I sit back and ponder as to why they would not want me to be there…or simply to even know. From the girl who has written me completely from her history, to the best friend who took her heart from me, to a dear friend returning from the pits of hell–I have been left behind so completely.
In many ways I believe that it is my fault. I am a low-maintenance friend. You do not need to call me, no need to check in. I am alive and burning ahead. This particular mindset is reflexive, for I do not call to check on them. They are alive, burning ahead in their own direction. Simply knowing that the people I care about are out there, doing whatever it is they are doing, is more than enough for me. I know it hurts people, how cold and insensitive I must appear. I hardly pick up the phone, and even more rarely call back. But I am living my life, the here and now of things is preeminent. This moment is preeminent.
I think I push away a lot of people without even trying. My ability to completely disconnect from places and people must seem callous. But I do not ever truly disconnect. My mind constantly replaying the moments of my life…
Like the time my estranged girlfriend of three years cooked me an amazing Valentine’s Day dinner and served a dessert that succinctly read, “Will you be mine?”
Like the time when I finally decided to fight the kid who made the first three years of my high school career miserable, and after twenty minutes of waiting outside it was discovered that he had passed out in a closet.
Or the time that I gave you that Dorothy Parker anthology and your eyes grew so unbelievably wet, as if you had never received a more perfect gift.
I relive all of you every day. I just do not need to hear your voice. I know it sounds terrible. But when we see one another, we will pick up right where we left off–good times and better drinks. I care so much about you, but you would never know by the way I act. I think that is the great secret I possess and have alluded to on this page previously: I am a loner at heart. There are two of me. The guy you know and the guy I hide. The guy who smiles and the guy who wishes he knew how to cry. The life of the party and the one who never wanted to come in the first place.
I struggle with these aspects of my personality. I show so few people this real side of me. I expose it here so openly because I like to believe that no one reads it. The first time I wrote like this I was in character the entire time; the social butterfly and the comedian dominating the words written. I wanted people to laugh…many, many people. Now I write as the man at the core; the lonely and complex philosopher. I want no one to laugh…because I like to think no one reads it.
I feed off the people that surround me. They help hide the darkness and draw from me the energies I have no will to expend. But once they leave, I am alone in my world once more. And I do not want to call them. I do not want to pick up when they call. The mask will return…I cannot show you the truth because you will not understand it.
And this is my repentance. Friends, who I believed to be so close, moving on without me. It is fair. Believe me. How many times did I want to spend him a package in Iraq, and how many times did I opt out of it… Money was never the issue. I didn’t want to send him simple things when my heart was always there with him. Nothing seemed important enough. Nothing seemed to express the fear I possessed everyday for him. The prayers I made for him. Selfish? Maybe not. But it appears so completely so, because I do not believe in the material–but its the world we live in. I know silly things like that don’t matter, but I wanted to show him I cared, and I did not.
And her–the girl who “forgot” a complete year of her life with me. Reading her marriage announcement in the newspaper, my only source, sickened me. The story of how they met reached back into the ages, claiming that her burgeoning marriage spanned across the entire year we shared together and into the present. I guess I deserved it. I only gave her my best friend–forever.
There are so many others. Others that have moved on. Marriage is only a symbol in this particular story, because it is so deeply personal and magnificent. I only wished to know…to know you were making an amazing choice and to give you what I could on your new journey.
Who I am at my core is imperfect and flawed, and I hurt people. Not overtly, but subtly and over time…the calls go unanswered, the phone never rings. I am sorry for what you think, but this is who I am…a monster of the temporal, a master of the moment. Do not doubt for a second I ever left any of you. To him, I remember our times…our kinship and respect. How inseparable we were…how no one could harm you with me beside you. To her, I remember our times…a freeze-framed kiss…my first. How inseparable we were…how nothing meant more to me than you. How you’d creep me out by signing your name with my last name. How I spent my sixteenth birthday with you…
These people, nameless, are symbols too. They represent a question between friends: Have I failed you? Has my parsimony caused you pain? Do you believe me when I say that I never ever left..?
I think I’ll find out his address and send him a belated wedding gift. An envelope containing only a check. And in the memo it will read, “To a new life.”
Because maybe he has begun one without me…
2 Responses to “A Question Between Friends”
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December 20th, 2007 at 8:05 pm
So basically you want to come to my wedding…you could’ve just said that.
On a bigger note though, don’t fall in to the selfish trap about what YOU must’ve done or not done. If those two people mean that much to you, then the ONLY thing you should care about is what THEY are doing.
You ignore me on AIM all the time when I know Matt’s talking to you at the same time so I know you’re there, but I don’t take it personally. People are busy.
December 21st, 2007 at 2:36 am
Irregardless, I take it personally.