Friendship
I spoke on the phone tonight to one of my historical friends. His mother and my mother got into so much trouble back in the day, flying with stock car racer Curtis Turner in his private plane all over the southeast, playing golf and meeting my Dad, who was Mr. Turner’s attorney.
Billy and I go back to my earliest memories. He’s 8 years older than I am which, when we were young, seemed like a vast crevasse I could not cross because, well, he was 8 years older. But tonight on the phone the 8 year difference in our ages didn’t matter one whit.
Billy lives 3000 miles away.
Recently, several close friends of mine have suddenly vanished, left my life, my orbit, on purpose. At least I thought they were friends. I was wrong. Obviously. They vanished of their own accord, I did not want them to leave. It has hurt me to the core, mainly because I don’t like that many people so when I make a friend I always think it is forever. I believe that I am a good friend, that I was a good friend to these people.
I don’t think anything like this has ever happened to me, not even in high school, if then.
Whatever happened to talking shit through?
Billy has known me all my life. He remembers my father and mother and my sister and brother, all from the beginning. He is my historical friend. I can count on him.
And because he is not, shall we say, a self-obsessed dried up piece of petty bullshit SHIT who, well… they are not worth the effort of my anger all these many months later…
“That she forgot me was the least
I felt it second pain
That I was worthy to forget
Was most I thought upon.
Faithful was all that I could boast
But Constancy became
To her, by her innominate,
A something like a shame.”
– Emily Dickinson, 1914