Making you A Metaphor

I’ve lost a friend. They’re not dead, and losing seems to be a sympathetic but archaic way of referring to a human process as natural as nodding politely at dinner parties. It’s an odd phrase, and one that seems much too jarring and sudden for what was a gradual and somewhat mutual parting of ways, consisting mostly of missed phone calls and empty promises. 

This particular “unfriending,” to use the vulgar and nascent term, was largely undertaken because of a divergence in lifestyle, as many high school relationships are apt to, and was done without fanfare or bile. There were no tearful confrontations or spiteful shit-talking. It was done in a way that seemed much too mature and cynical for sixteen-year-olds. But it was important, a part of me that had grown and withered, and seemed to deserve the absentee Lifetime movie dramatics. 

My friends, my other phantom limbs, have usually opined with a sympathetic shrug, Oh, well. People sometimes drift apart. Not with me! I want to shout. By some miracle of nature or innate clinginess, I have maintained all my friendships through varying degrees of physical presence, romantic entanglement, and sobriety. I had never lost a friend, a real friend, and still haven’t, with the notable exception. 

I knew the whole time. It was me who had initiated it, originally. Or perhaps that’s something I have willfully told myself, so as not to hurt my own feelings too much. Dedicating myself to a high school experience rife with buzzkills and virginity, I made the conscious choice to reject the offers of parties, chill hangouts, and the occasional Xanax prescriptions. By doing so, I alienated a vast majority of the teenage population, and, consequently, one of my best friends.

It would hurt, I was told. My counselor warned me it would feel like I had forgotten my wallet for a while. A sudden ugly shock, your hands playing your back pockets like bongo drums, and you blissfully oblivious to the odd looks from the other patrons of the dry foods aisle. It did, in a sense. I often felt that sudden drop of the stomach, like when you miss a stair and your foot succumbs to pure and terrifying gravity. But, after a while, it numbed to a slow, dull ache, like a gunshot wound in wet weather, usually sparked by a song they liked or passing the restaurant we used to frequent. 

We had a language together, as all friends, siblings, and spouses seem to. Jokes only we understood, songs coded for different moods, anecdotes that are only funny in the moment and lose the humor with the retelling. I had crafted an entire person with them and I didn’t know what to do with that version of myself anymore. Who was I supposed to show my horrific rough drafts to, or bring to a Dead Kennedys concert? It was years of asking myself the same questions, guised in unavoidable nostalgia and frustration: What do I do with everything I made for you? For only you? 

We had reached out again, trying to reconnect on the common ground of writing. With long bouts of passionate expositions about plot and copious amounts of caffeine, we seemed to reach a stand-still. It wasn’t the same. It would never be the same, and haranguing me about dystopian clichés in the way that used to lead to a deeper shared intimacy fell flat. We no longer spoke the same language, and we realized it in a way that hurt and healed at the same time. 

It’s like when you suddenly remember the phone number for a house you no longer live in, or the birthday of a pet who has died. Why do I need this anymore? Is there not a metaphorical trash bin or garage sale where I can dump all this useless crap? But it’s more than the frustration of constant, nagging reminders of who we used to be. I have lost the purpose for all this junk floating around in my brain. You were the context, and now I have random bits of suddenly obsolete information drifting around like asteroids, waiting for the passing obstacles of anniversaries and book releases to collide into and Chernobyl a bit of me for a while. Memories retroactively destroy the joy of new experiences, as any PTSD patient or melancholic writer can tell you. But, I want to assure the friend who may or may not be reading: You’re not destroying the future with remnants of the past. The absence of you is. 

Imagine one day, Saturn just disappears with a cataclysmic snap. (Excuse my general lack of scientific data and think broadly and symbolically, as writers are doomed to do.) Suddenly, all the debris, asteroids, moons, and drifting metallurgy from our attempts to surpass the limits of mankind lose their gravitational fixative. They are suddenly unstuck, free in a way they have never experienced or intended. 

Well, I want to say, you were my Saturn. You were the still point around which a part of me revolved, and now I have nothing to anchor your coffee order, or the way you name book characters, or the love I have for you. For only you. 

So what do I do now? 

I don’t think we have an answer to that yet, other than the sad and unsympathetic passage of time. It’s already dulled, as all pain must, and memories become more and more distorted (a problem in itself). I should probably be grateful for the little pieces I have left, so I am able to stitch something together to make me smile on Fourth of July or giggle at a certain street sign. But I’m not, because humans (at least in my albeit limited experience) are pathologically unable to be grateful for pain, unless you’re another baffling Mother Teresa or masochistic misanthrope. I wouldn’t want my friend back, as I am reluctant to return to my fourteen-year-old self and her questionable tastes, nor would I want the new versions of the two of us to regain that closeness. We’re different people, and we would have to lose parts of ourselves to fit together again. I can’t ask that of them, nor of myself.

We still see each other, of course. Life rarely ever has a real amputation, and I’ll still see them, cigarette in hand (they never used to smoke, I think with an ugly human bitterness) and we’ll make casual conversation about our summer plans or the new car they bought or the guy they met. Another acquaintance, another party, another excuse I make up so I can escape to the backyard to hang out with the family dog. They’ve become just someone else, and now I have a dead language and cosmic debris in my hands, waiting for a reason to remember.

Eva Kerins a burgeoning writer with an incredible love for all forms of artistic expression, her interests ranging from the works of Rachel Carson and Jonathan Swift to modern day writers like Tim Kreider and Ross Gay. She is a full-time student with a love of indoor gardening, a mediocre amount of talent in playing the ukulele, and a tentative plan to intentionally lose herself in a foreign city.