pablos

thoughts about losing regularity

I was home recently and took the time to reread my high school yearbook. There, I found a message from someone who was and is one of my closest friends. She was always the precocious and eloquent one, so I’ll present the relevant snippet from her directly:

“I want to cry, selfishly, because I am losing the regularity of your presence.”

Kind words, but I recall reading them with confusion; back then, “losing regularity” seemed inconceivable. I understood that new chapters meant new people and less time and so on and so forth, but I couldn’t imagine how people “lose regularity.”

Years later, my old friends and I are busy people. We’re in graduate programs, or at an assortment of impressive firms, or getting married. But sometimes, when the stars align, we’re able to meet in person. After high school and as time passed, distance grew further. There were greater lulls in the conversation and an increasingly notable period of “de-rusting” before conversations felt natural. Truthfully, if we were to meet today as strangers, I’m not sure if we would even be friends. At the very least, we would not mean what we do to one another. Time, distance, and itineraries have driven wedges between us, but that is an inevitable fate only spared by spouses and family.

That reality may seem distressing, but they’re still my old friends. In some ways, we may not be as close as we once were, but in other ways, I’m closer to them now than I could have ever been back then. I can appreciate aspects of their character that no longer exist—trace the origins of thoughts and tendencies that have since evolved or disappeared. I can appreciate these latent qualities—invisible to anyone who has not watched them grow. That sort of unspoken history and intimacy is something unique, something I cherish.

There’s a confidence I have with old friends. Regardless of the temporary stiffness of conversation or what could be lost from helping, I trust—in a manner that was forged over countless hours, in circumstances that no longer exist—that they would be there for me.

There are a time and place for everything. Gone are the days where we could spend hours together doing nothing, and frankly, if we tried to recreate that now, it would feel hollow for us all. This is a new kind of friendship, and while some cherished habits are left to the past, that doesn’t mean I’ve lost anything essential. I still share my life with old friends—just differently, and that’s enough and that’s eternal.