lost friends

yesterday i mailed a letter to who i hope is a long lost friend of mine. we were inseperable for most of our middle school lives up until she moved to mississippi the summer of our freshman year of high school.

i had been searching off and on on-line for many years. you know entering her name in search boxes hoping something would pop up with maybe an address or phone number... anything to get reconnected with her. well i had no luck. not the free luck anyway. sure i could find out the value of her home for $49.95 but i just wanted an address to send a letter. well i struck gold when i mentioned this to a work friend and her husband was able to find out information based on information i had. so... i was able to get her address.

i spent a bit of time drafting the letter. i wanted it to be a bit personal but not too much because what if this ISN'T my friend but a crazed lunatic. my street address is on the envelope after all. so i was sorta vague, but i did give my name, where we lived and when she moved. i included my email address and asked the reader to let me know one way or the other as to whether it's my friend or not. i figure, if it is, surely she'll email or write back (i hope) and if it's not, i'd like to know that the letter was received and that i still need to keep looking.

as i've gotten older i've come to appreciate close friends in ways i hadn't done before. when my friend moved away, i assumed we'd write and call forever. my mom and an old friend of hers still send christmas cards each year. i just figured that'd be the way things would be for us. but it wasn't. all of a sudden the letters just stopped. one of us decided something was more important than writing back. it could have been me. i took the friendship for granted. assuming it would always be there for me and up until i realized it wasn't, it didn't matter.

my life has gone thru so many changes since she and i spoke and i guess i would have liked to continue to 'grow up' with her like we did when we were younger. i've often wondered how she was, was she married, did she have children, was she happy, does she ever wonder about me... basic stuff. for two people to have been as close as we were it was hard to have the friendship just die one day. it's something i'll regret forever if i can't reconnect with her now.

the friendships i have now are very important to me. very precious and each one is very different from the other. i have friends at work who i confide career goals with, who i grumble with about deadlines because no one else will understand me. i have friends that i've known for years and now, somehow seem like strangers to me because our lives have shifted so differently. i have friends who i've KNOWN of for many years but didn't really get to know until a bit ago... and it's crazy to me that we weren't friends long ago. each one is unique and i think that's what life is all about. that's what people are all about. differences, uniqueness, and figuring out how we fit together.

i hope i get the opportunity to discover my old friend again. and soon. i hate to waste anymore time since we've already lost so much. almost 20 years to be exact.