Bullet Point #8

“Your friends will change and some will leave you. This will undoubtedly cause you grief.”

Deep do the roots of friendship lie. Deep in my soul there are a few other souls who have claimed home. Home I gave them, or have tried to.

But some friends have turned from you.

That they have. My heart pierced. Pain took a throne right at the centre of my heart’s secret place for love. I had no words, none loud enough to keep those who were slipping away. As the miles grew below my feet, the ties grew thinner and some friends disappeared out of sight, forever. The pain this caused, like a deadly serum, spread over my soul and kept it ill. It can only slowly recover from the loss of the lives it thought it was connected to.

Loyalty you say is a virtue.

One that is often neglected, one that has been my essential companion on the journey to finding friends to travel the lonely road of life with. Early in life I have learnt that friends mean air, source of life, answers to many tangled tales told along the way. First I stayed silent and in the silence listened to murmurs. From those fragments of words I picked the origin which best suited my ears. Then I watched as that person showed their outline to me. Then I saw the smiling face, held the sweaty little hands, laughed at jokes made at somebody else’s expense and then showed parts of my soul; without them realising I gave them my all. These friends I still have, they still see the whole of me.

I heard you have changed.

My one foe: time, has made me who I am. And change must come hand in hand with time. Sometimes welcomed sometimes not so much. But the most dearest parts of my soul have had time to change with me, to see the change in me and see the change in themselves. It’s a two way mirror.

But you cry.

When I know that a friend has been lost to the world, yes. When I know that no longer will my ears hear the whispered secrets. When I am alone. When I realise that alone might also mean lonely. When she’s on an island and I am not. When he is fighting for his life and I know not. When they’re together and I’m not with them. When a song that we danced to plays on the radio. When a phone call sounds distant, too distant to comprehend what has happened to us. When time robs us of the most precious moments a friendship can have. When I know that treasuring a glimpse of a past life can never carry meaning in the now. When weekends are too short for a meaningful conversation. Then I weep.

Then I weep.