Friendships that you don't drop but wonder

[jessmarimba]

I have a friend that I considered, at one point, to be like a brother. We've drifted apart and I've rarely seen him for the last few years, since we live in different states. We pretty much hang out when he's working someplace cool and I have time to go visit (ie, Telluride Film Festival or similar events).

I was starting to get irritated with him when I knew he was the closest friend (geographically) when I was in the hospital and he didn't come visit. A few weeks ago he called a couple times at 2am and I didn't answer, and I woke up and found him sleeping on my couch. He'd broken into my house through a cracked window. Now...we're done. That was really not cool. But I haven't told him - I guess I'll just let the drifting stay drifted.

[Roadtrip]

I had a friend who I would consider distant. We struck it off and developed a bond that I wasn't really expecting, seeing she was old enough to be my mom, tho I found in her at that time someone I could talk to and relate to.

We talked about everything and anything. Crying together, laughing together, and I'd try my best to bring her around when she fought depression. She came to visit my family and I hers, but we drifted apart. I started my career and met my then-to-be husband and while we communicated off and on over the years, never to the depth that we once shared, for that I felt somewhat at fault... She made me feel at fault. Perhaps because I was living my life and she had already lived hers. I don't know, but it's part of the reason that I we drifted apart. I would send Christmas cards and Birthday wishes those small gestures weren't returned or even appreciated so that eventually stopped too.

Almost a decade goes by and I found that she had a Facebook page and briefly reconnected with her only to find that she was very sick and undergoing Chemo. She was very weak but in those last few months before the cancer took her, I told her that I enjoyed the times we had together and regretted the time we had lost. She admitted to me she wasn't mad at me, but that she simply wanted me to spread my wings and fly without her if need be, so we were "OK" when the end came.

I still regret not having been open years earlier so we could have had more then a few brief weeks.

In the end... you have to get busy living or get busy dying. No regrets.

Shannon

[shootingstar]

Roadtrip: A wonderful friendship story with a sad ending, but we are all human and frail at the end of life.

Jess: Your guy friend was pushing the boundaries of friendship by breaking into your home. Hopefully he knows this... the only exception I would even make would be a friend who was avoiding physical harm from someone else in a chase and friend had done nothing wrong to create the chase.

[tangentgirl]

Super corny, but relevant old Girl Scout song:

Make new friends
But keep the old
One is silver
And the other's gold.

Now, everyone, in rounds...

[limewave]

I have a friend that was like a sister to me in college. She got married right away and moved far away. I moved back home. We live thousands of miles a part.

I don't like talking on the phone, so I don't call. She doesn't have a computer at home, so she doesn't email. But I have written her letters over the last 10 years, maybe 2 to 3 a year. I never heard back from her. But I just kept writing, letting her know I was thinking of her and what was new in my life, etc. Sometimes I sent pictures of the kids.

Last week I got the mail and about fell over. There was a letter from my friend! She apologized for not writing over the years but wanted me to know how much each of my letters meant to her and how much she looked forward to them.

[Biciclista]

I had a friend that started from my childhood, when I moved away from our neighborhood she and I maintained a pen pal correspondence starting when I was 6. A few years back, her politics (anti muslim actually) was the last straw for me. I called her out on the carpet, and she sicced her older brother on me, a fanatical right wing type.He actually had the nerve to play throw up on things that happened when I was 4 years old and spewed enough invective to fry a chicken!!! (what bad thing did 4 year old me do? I had a potty accident at their house..)
It was bizarre and sad... thus the friendship ended.

[northstar]

I have a friend like that. We got each other through struggles in college, were really like sisters. Then we got jobs, started our lives, and drifted apart. And it is a little weird when we see each other, which is now maybe once, twice a year. It is what it is. While I'm sad that we aren't as close as we used to be, we were what we needed to be then, and are what we are now. No use trying to force ourselves back into the past.