It’s hard not to come across as though I’ve been eating sour grapes, when – in fact – I probably was. At least nibbling at ‘em. Thinking on, discussing getting together with old friends, maintaining old friends, scraping at the past as if scrounging for something precious where little but dust remains. You don’t pass from closeness into estrangement happily nor freely; it’s something that occurs in spite of one’s hopes. I’d always wanted for myself and everyone I’ve ever been close to that we’d continue on at our best with each other for as long as life dug its heels in, but few of us live only the one life. Indeed, throughout our span, we go through several, in and out and beyond change, living new lives and different lives that affect us down to the thick of our personalities, even, changing not only our existence in each case but our very fabric of being. People change. They do. They have to because change is happening around them and through them and to them constantly. Maturing means eventually accepting this and embracing one’s own changing soul. Getting there, however, takes some time and doing and who’s ever been ready for that shit? Certainly not me.

**PCHS Class Of 1986 10-Year Reunion, June 1996**

Embitterment came when my fever dream of holding onto everyone I’ve ever cared for ended. I looked for blame, you know. It’s whomever’s fault this happened or it’s because of that, when – truly – nobody could’ve foreseen it, nobody could’ve veered away from it happening. Change is the result of so many factors, so many choices made here and there and everywhere that, though history may prove some of them poor ones, they were the best ones we could make at the moment, given our knowledge, wisdom and situations on the individual level at any point in time. “I’d do the same again!” or “I’d do it another way, if I had the chance to.” Who knows? Me? I’d likely come to the same conclusions and responses.

“Knowing what you know now?”

But, would I? If I did it all over, again, and everything being equal as it had been, I don’t know. I think it’s a silly thing to agonize over, as it’s gone down and can’t be altered, no matter how badly one might wish on its possibility. Won’t happen. So many choices made, coming up, with faulty logic on the table, lacking experience and so often operating on pure-ass emotion, causing a butterfly effect into our futures and each other’s. I never thought I’d end up here with this mindset I’ve got, the one that loathes the idea of reuniting the older I get, but it’s where I’m standing. Maybe it’s the result of once too many being asked how I could’ve fallen as I had, how “somebody like me” could throw it all away for a life of nothing. She didn’t know my life. She, like many of our contemporaries, liked the look of her own words, the sound of her own voice, rather than the rhythm of a good, edifying conversation. Or the guy with the drunk-dialing finger who can’t get away from 18 while accusing me of “living in the past”. You don’t even know me, anymore, dude. I don’t think you ever did. And thanks for dropping me a hint that you are the only reason I had the circle of friends I did. I appreciate that. Why did you call, again? I don’t get it, how it’s so difficult to roll with the years and the change they bring and grow a friendship through it, build upon it, rather than picking off the corpse of some departed existence. I’ve been to and through high school; I needn’t go back. Some fuckers wanna haul you back there on the daily. Why can’t we be happy with who we’ve become, each other and ourselves, without dropping our jaws in salivation into the rear view mirror? I mean, some of us are happy to have flung it aside in favor of whatever’s next, whatever’s here. You’re not supposed to live in a “way-back” machine to have friends. You’re supposed to appreciate them as you might an ever-expanding tree. If that’s not possible…

I dunno. If I had the answers, I’d be Grand Poobah of the gaddamned universe.