At my work we have a ‘write club’, where every month we give ourselves a prompt and we share our stories. It’s a rather beautiful way of seeing how other people’s brains work, how writing can differ from person to person, and what nonsense we can come up with. Last month our prompt was ‘Farewells’ and I wrote the below. I wanted to share it because, well, it went down well there and I wrote it thinking about friendships in adult life, how difficult it is to see each other, how tired we all are, how we are all trying our best and even if we aren’t talking every day, we’re still going to be friends.
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It’s not goodbye. It’s not farewell or so long or take care. Obviously, I want you to take care, but I feel remised to say that at the moment. It’s more of an ‘until next time’ than any sort of emotional separation. A wish that things didn’t have to change, A wish that we could happily live in a purgatory of contentment underscored with apathy, but life is weird and brutal and brilliant and hard and we have to move forward or the journey isn’t a journey.
Yeah we will keep in touch. We will send memes to each other. I’ll heart your Instagram stories, you’ll like my linkedin updates, we will remember each other occasionally from the periphery of our lives and occasionally reach out on Birthdays or big events and wish each other well. It’s the slow demise of the adult friendship. You live in chaos and so do I, and in that chaos it’s hard to see beyond it, to see through the whirlwind of real life and expectation. Our minds are cluttered with the every day, each responsibility filling the already well stocked pantry of our brains until you can’t close the door. So things get thrown out, or left behind, or ignored, or forgotten. It’s no one’s fault. Everyone is trying their best to keep their heads above water and achieving anything more than that is a brilliant victory. There’s no guilt, no anger and no blame here. This is how we survive.
One day, six months from now, one year from now, we will sit and drink and talk as if no time has passed at all. Our bodies will have changed, new lines on our faces from the new stories we have to share. We will talk about grown up things, house issues, maybe you’ve decided to have a family, maybe you’ve changed job or even partner, you’ve got a new tattoo? It suits you. Our words spill from our mouths like waterfalls of memories, talking about the good old times which were never that good, talking about how easy it used to be to be human, how youth is wasted on the young, how social freedom is squandered by the socially free. After a few hours we will stand up, our legs drunk from good conversation, hug tight and tell each other we love each other, and disappear for another stretch of time.
If time was a commodity we could swim in we would be inseparable, we would have adventures and revel in shenanigans that would make Oscar Wilde blush, but we are chained to reality, to our normalcy, we are trying our best and we can appreciate that in each other.
I will always love you. I will always think about you on the odd occasion when something reminds me of you, but I will hesitate before messaging you to say I’ve thought of you. Because that’s weird isn’t it? And you’re busy. Far too busy for me. I already feel like a thief of your time when you check in on me, when you ask how I’m doing and if I’m looking after myself, so to invade the time when your mind is absent of me is selfish and cruel. I’ll miss you. I’ll miss just knowing I will see you regularly, that we can meet up with little to no preparation, instead of the mountains of admin and calendar conflicts and endless circles of rearranging. But the fork in the road of our lives sends us on different stories. And that’s okay. It’s all okay. I’ll tell myself it’s okay. Because if you don’t move forward on the journey then it isn’t a journey.
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This is a really lovely piece of writing. Really glad you decided to share it
This is so beautifully written and relatable it moved me to tears. Thank you for sharing.