I am not permanent

I wish I could figure out why I'm wired so strangely.

I've got a bad habit of realizing how much someone means to me about three years too late. I just had a friend, who I admit I had a rather tumultuous relationship with in the past, seek me out after about three years only to let me know he was about to leave the country, possibly for good. J and I had something good, but, well, we'll just say we couldn't leave well enough alone. The key to our friendship, before things got weird, was that he's a total shameless ham and I laugh at anything.....It was a good match.

I haven't thought much about J in a very long time; I had him shelved in one of those compartments in my mind I reserve for unresolved issues and uncomfortable situations. Only occasionally would I hear a song (usually Dave Matthews...I'm so lame) or smell someone's cologne and he would pop up in my mind's eye.... only to be promptly relegated back to the depths of my mind so I wouldn't have to think about how our friendship had fizzled so unsatisfactorily. No one I knew had heard from him in ages...
...yet there he was on my IM screen, saying he heard I got engaged and that he was leaving the country...

It took a couple days, but I finally got him on the cell...
...and remembered why we had become friends so quickly in the first place, before the drama. Before the intensity of sudden connection got confused with something more, and we both lost sight of what had brought us together originally.

He was funny, I was funny, and we were honest with each other for the first time in a long time. He made dumb jokes about my fiance (who he hasn't met) and how he is dating his right hand...Classy, as always. I reminded him he had his chance and actually TURNED ME DOWN when I asked him to homecoming senior year.... jerk. :)

It was great...then his phone cut out. And we never made contact again. And now he's in Australia. And I am kicking myself for not seeking him out again before he cashed in on that dual-citizenship.

So, moral of the story, gather ye rosebuds... or whatever. Life passes you by sometimes, and all you get is half a conversation and no goodbye to show for it.

Here's to J.... May you not be mauled by kangaroos, and may you make those Aussie bitches laugh as hard as I do. Much love from this hard-hearted harbinger of haggis. I'll try not to screw it up next time.

"The district sleeps alone tonight after the bars turn out their lights
And send the autos swerving into the loneliest evening
And I am finally seeing
Why I was the one worth leaving..."
----Postal Service, "The District Sleeps Alone Tonight"