So the past two mornings I have woken up from very vivid dreams. This doesn't happen to me very often, and I wish that it did because dreams really fascinate me. I love it when you dream about people in your life doing completely uncharacteristic things. For instance, my friend Miranda from work once had a dream that I was having an affair with some old guy who was an exec or something in the company. It was absolutely bizarre, but we laughed about it for a long time.
But Saturday morning I dreamt I was on a boat and Ellen DeGeneres was my cruise director. It was fantastic, and I wrote it down so that I wouldn't forget about it. But last night my dream was a little bit more bittersweet. It was a lot more boring really, I was just hanging out with an old guy friend from high school. We were really close but have fallen out of touch. But in the dream we were still best friends, and we laughed and watched movies and played Yahtzee and made really good drinks. I was mixing them like I was some kind of bartender, which I totally am not.
But I woke up smiling, just after I had made my friend some concoction that included Cherry 7-Up. And then I remembered that we aren't friends anymore. I have no idea what is going on in his life. I used to know everything.... every class and every crush.
You and I probably need both hands, and maybe all of our toes, to keep track of people who used to be really important in our lives. And even though these people are just friends, it is kind of like you broke up. And with every break-up, someone has to be the dumper. My sister talked to me the other day about how she heard through a mutual friend that her best friend from elementary said that they had just "both drifted apart." That's the perfect dumper's excuse, though. In reality, we a) outgrew the person, b) got tired of trying to stay in touch, c) got overloaded with close friends, and had to let one fall by the wayside.... and there are a lot more reasons why friendships fade. But its clear that in most relationships, they fail because we don't put in the effort. And in most cases, like my sister and like me with my dream friend, someone feels like they have gotten dumped.
I went to a seminar-type thing in my dorm one year in college given by the professors who teach a class on personal relationships. And they put relationships into two categories: friends of the road and friends of the heart. Friends of the road are characterized well by my dream friend. We were friends because of proximity and convenience and common interests, and when we lost those things, we lost that friendship. We will have very few friends of the heart in our lives. And you know it when you have a relationship like this.
But that is not to say that friends of the road are bad friends. For example, when I did my short stint in grad school, there were two girls I met there that were really, really there to share their lives with me. I needed them, and they were there for me.
I don't really know how to finish this thought... except thanks, you people in my life. Or people who have been a big part of my life. Life happens to you, and we all grow and change and get an education and figure out what we want our lives to look like. But you can most simply be defined by the company you keep... and I'm pretty pleased with my definition.
