800 miles away...

It’s hard for me to be friends with you. I wonder if we were to meet today, rather than 20 years ago, if we would be friends at all. I think you would consider me too liberal, too independent, a little weird. Maybe you think those things anyway, or would if you knew the me of today at all. I know that when you look at me you see the person I was at 16; it makes it easier to understand why we’re still friends. Maybe I do the same to you. Sometimes I wonder that we were ever good friends at all. We were shades of the people we are now back then. I know part of it was that we went to school together and participated in the same activities, but part of it was something else. I wanted to be your friend. I wanted something you had. Confidence? Faith? Great hair? Our lives were different then, but we found common ground. I tried to talk to you this time, to help you understand why this brand of friendship doesn’t work for me. Why it frustrates me when you talk about how we’re such good friends, how you know me so well. I don’t claim to know you well anymore. It seems that the façade is enough for you, the appearance of friendship. It’s not enough for me. But I’m torn. Stranded between the work it would take to build a real friendship and the desire to drop it altogether. Deep down I know we’ll do neither. We’ll continue to see each other when I’m in town; you’ll talk of visiting Tennessee but never make it. You’ll say how great it is to have lifelong friends. I’ll nod and smile. We’ll go our separate ways, and that will be that.