Blast from the Past

Some people, you can tie most of your memories to. This was the time that...Remember when...They become marker posts for your life. People that you can't imagine ever not being in your life.
Then they aren't. And somehow you create a new construct without them in it. And then one day, you turn around and there they are. And it doesn't feel like nine years since you saw them, it seems as though it were yesterday.

There are times when I think that because I am socially inept with new people, that the only way to be happy is to be with the people that have always known me. There is comfort in that, but also the knowledge that these people always call you on your bullshit. You can't get away with things with people who know you that well. But what do you do when you realize that those people are all gone?

I saw someone yesterday that I hadn't seen in a long, long time. And all I could think of last night was how surreal it was to see them again. Here was someone that I was glued to the hip with through most of high school and my early adult life. If you had asked me ten years ago, I would have said that we would be friends forever. But we weren't. People move, lose touch, get married and you blink and almost a decade has passed.
I wonder if you can pick up where you left off and if these people can serve as tethers to who you are or if the past is best left behind.

I'm not sure what the answer is. It seems in my life that I've left a lot of people behind, taken them for granted, lost touch. I am ashamed to say that with most I never looked back, and only mourned their loss later. Only later did I realize that I didn't have anyone around who remembered me, knew me, loved me. Some of that I can trace to switching careers- in theatre you always figure that you'll run into people again, we seem to be on a neverending loop. And when you leave it, it is as though you've lost the connect to that world.
When I moved home, it seemed as though the only people I ran into that remembered me were people I could have cared less about- casual aquaintances from high school, that quite frankly, I barely remembered. It seemed as though the people that mattered to me had either become people I no longer respected or recognized or had disappeared completely.

I spent most of last night flipping through the memory album in my head. Much had become fuzzy, but there were bright, clear moments that sped through- almost too fast to catch all of the image. I tried to reconcile these old images with yesterday afternoon, but it just wouldn't sync, as though the new image sat like a ghost over the old one.

I've proven that you can go home again, and it is not home that changes but you. But I think I've learned that while you can go home again, it doesn't mean that anyone will be there to greet you when you get there.