I have been close friends with one of my close friends from home since the 7th grade. He was actually my best friend from 8th grade until about my sophomore year of high school, which isn't the longest time, but was a critical juncture of my young adult life, if you will. Despite being one of the latest "childhood" friendships I formed, he has always been incredibly important to my life--even when we're fighting, even when we can't remember why we still try so hard to bridge the ever-widening gap between our lives--that's my boy, you know?
And all summer while I was in New Brunswick, he kept telling me how much he missed me and literally begging me to come home. I got some of the saddest Facebook wall posts of my life, and blasts from the past with songs we loved in the 8th grade, and every time I told him when I was coming back, he said it was too far away. I felt so bad that at times I legitimately wondered if I should take a day or two off of work and hitch a ride home with T when she went down to visit her family for two days each week. But I didn't, and so when I texted him to complain about packing and say how many hours it would be til I was home, I got a giant "Yayyyyyyyyyy!"
We went out with two of his friends that night, and I had the most delicious blueberry martini and fried cheesecake (which wasn't as good as he had claimed, but was still enjoyable). He came back to my house and hung out for a while, talking to my mom and my sister and feeling like he was part of my family again. Then he went home and...that was it. It's been two weeks since I've seen him, and I'm going back to school in less than a week. And I'm just a little confused as to what's going on.
Actually, that's a lie. I think I know what's going on. I don't think he actually misses ME very much. I think he misses the friendship we had between 8th grade and sophomore year, when we were two peas in a pod. I think he misses when things were simple and our lives weren't on such widely diverging paths. He's moving, and kept finding things from our early years together while he was packing, and I understand how he felt a little, because I kind of miss that friendship and simplicity too...but I would never want to go back to being the person I was then.
It's so hard to maintain friendships when personality differences that were bridgeable in adolescence become lifestyles that seem lightyears apart in adulthood. It's hard knowing that someone misses the idea of you and him, but is evidently dissatisfied by the reality of being together.
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