know me

I love getting together with old friends. The feeling of knowing that there are people who are important enough to me (and that I am important enough to them) that we are willing to put forth the effort of maintaining our relationships after we no longer see each other on a daily basis, the excitement of once again witnessing their everyday, even if it's for only a brief time. I love catching up on our lives, and talking and laughing together.

The problem? I always, always, always get nervous. My stomach gets queasy, my hands shaky, and I never know what to expect. I've changed, they've changed, and our relationships have changed, and there's always the challenge of re-discovering where you fit each other's now separated worlds. It requires finally abandoning your past relationship, and redefining it in new terms. The transition from dating to being just friends, or from every-day friends to long-distant friends all at once becomes final. And you must rediscover each other. You allow yourself to see them as who they are now, instead of who they were when you knew them last, and hope that they will do the same for you. Hope that they will accept and recognize the changes that you have made in yourself, and the effort it took you to get there, while maintaining the closeness you once had. A reunion requires a final admission that your friends have become new people, and no matter how much you care, or how hard you tried, you were not present to witness it.