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As the World Falls Down...

 

When I was young, I had two best friends.  They were not particularly friendly with each other and in fact would often get a little jealous if I was hanging out with one or the other that day. I had both of these friends as my best friends for a couple of years until we moved out of state.  At 9 years old, with no such thing as cell phones, we did what so many did then – we lost touch – despite a few valiant efforts to try and write.  We eventually did move back to the state, but not back to the same area and I did not see these two again until high school. By then, they had their own crowd they hung out with and we were all merely acquaintances.  I remember feeling a little sad even then, because I knew how fond I had been of both of them. I was jealous of all the new memories they made after I left while my family moved around and I had no one with whom I had that kind of history with.  I always held onto that fondness and both of them have always had a special place in my heart.

 

Last week, I found out that one of them passed away. She and I had talked off and on over the years, always saying we would get together, catch up on old times, once schedules allowed. Schedules never allowed. The opportunity was missed.  From the limited contact I had with her, I know she loved life. She adored her daughter and her grandson. She lived for moments with them. She was a spectacular friend to those she was close to and really, truly cared about them and thought about them and showed them often.  She was my age. It doesn’t seem fair or right and it has caused this heaviness to just weigh on me. 

 

There has been so much loss this year and, I’m afraid, for me it seems that it will continue.  This year has broken my heart into a million pieces and just when I think I can start picking them up, one by one, something else causes them to scatter.  I have been grasping at straws and moving in a thousand different directions trying to figure out which way I’m supposed to go.  I have felt wholly unsatisfied with everything, unsettled, ruffled, uneasy.  I have been somewhere in this in-between of wanting to just sleep to wanting to change everything to wanting to embrace the people I love to wanting to throttle people for their poor excuses.  Life is fleeting – I know this, now more than ever.  I know I need to make the most of my moments – and I am trying. Always trying.

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