Once Upon a Wonderwall

A career adviser encouraged our class to google ourselves, just to make sure nothing embarrassing popped up.  I knew nothing would as I’ve not posted or been involved in anything that could cost me my name. I did so despite that fact and of course my random tramplings over the internet presented themselves to me.

One of the first things listed were my myspace blogs.  I’ve not updated in almost two years and nearly all of them I wrote while in high school. I read through the four or five most recent posts. They were sparse, sometimes stretching a few months in between. Often times very abstract, usually my younger self seeking my identity or posting about my religious philosophy at the time.

One post that resonated, was the one I posted on the last day of my senior year of high school. It was comprised of song lyrics. One read:

Now we’ll all split up and go our own ways
probably won’t see each other the same ways
but no matter what happens
I’ll never forget all the times we’ve had together.

Andy came to mind. Aside from Kayleigh, Andy was my best friend. We rode to school together, we would go lay in the park at night really late and stare up at the stars, take drives blaring music and screaming the lyrics. I can not listen to certain music without hearing Andy’s almost in tune voice singing it. He was my senior prom date. Plastic ring machines at the grocery store bring silent chuckles to me when I remember the early days in our friendship.

We always held each other up. If I needed him, his shoulder was there for me to cry on. My hand was there for him to hold. We were always together at school, maneuvering to get classes together or simply just walking to class together. Everyone assumed we were dating and we endured plenty of banter. But we never took the steps to furthering our friendship. We never even kissed. We had moments when we questioned taking it deeper, but for whatever reason we didn’t.

He saved me in so many ways. He was the goodness of my high school experience.

Sometimes, it really pains me to know how far away we are from each other now. We’ve both gone to the same college since January of 2007 and I’ve seen him approximately five times (not counting when we lived in the dorms together). We both obtained significant others and new friends. Time, life, space, they all got in the way. And we, well, we stopped trying.

I know, I know that’s how life goes sometimes. You just loseWeight Exercise touch. I hate any relationship ending. Often times, I’ve wanted to fix this space. To start hanging out and wait for the awkwardness to recede and for the old days to begin. I’ve even, in some ways started to take the step towards becoming, at the very least more in contact with him, but I’ve never really taken a leap into becoming anything near what we use to be. It’s scary. It’s better left with us having distance because of time, rather than because of rejection from one party.

There are many things,
I’d like to say to you
but I don’t know how.

When my 18 year old self posted those lyrics, she had wisdom beyond what she even knew. We’ve separated, we see each other, maybe in some of the light that we did in high school, but we mostly see each other as someone who time has taken too far away to reconcile the space of it. We’re the same people differently.

I loved and love Andy.  Friendships and memories that existed such as what we had can never be erased. Even though the memories aren’t continually being made, they were at one point in time. Those moments are just as important as the ones I make today and will make tomorrow.

There are many more memories and thoughts I could express about Andy, but perhaps this is enough. Or perhaps, it’ll never be enough.

Keep close the ones you love.