Letting something change is hard. Letting something change that you've known a certain way for 16 years is even harder. And when you're faced with the realization that nothing you do can stop said change from occurring... the only thing left is to take a deep breath, shake out your hands, and move it along like you've still got a purpose.
Even if you don't feel like you do.
My family and I moved to Wisconsin in March of 1997. It was a rough time for all of us, but not really that rough now that I come to think about it. We said goodbye to the people and places we had always known, and then we journeyed across the country to start a new adventure. It was easier to be the one that leaves because you've got so many new and exciting things to experience when you reach your destination. You don't, at least I didn't when I was 11, think about the people you are leaving behind.
What are they going to go through? How will they feel about it all? When we got here I had a pretty easy time making friends. It was the end of 5th grade and people were more excited about me being from Southern California than anything else. 6th grade was just fine and dandy as well, but when 7th grade started I got sick and ended up missing the first few months of school.
More on that in another blog, sometime.
When I came back to school in November of 1998, I didn't have friends anymore. New cliques had been formed in a school full of new faces, and I wasn't the "it" person anymore. If anything I was the weak person because I'd been sick and not present for the team building that went on without me. Cue the violins, I know.
I met a girl though, a special one, about a month after coming back in December of 1998. Her name was Katie (the @klreynol I refer to in these blogs (but only as Katie in this one)), and we met through a girl I had started to "date" if holding hands counts as dating. Katie and I got along pretty well and always had plenty of things to talk about. We had a homeroom together that was in the gym and we wrote stupid things with Jelly Pens and notes to each other, yadda yadda. And try as I might I just cannot find any pictures of us together from that school year.
Eventually my girlfriend faded into obscurity and Katie and I became "best friends." I had never really had one before... the kids I grew up with in California never really earned the title. Through no fault of theirs, of course, I just didn't think about bestowing it. Katie and I did everything together. Movies and bike rides and phone calls that lasted for hours. We shared stories and confided secrets, we grew closer in a way that I hadn't experienced before.
2000
That's the oldest picture I have of us, from 8th grade graduation. Well there's one other but it was only like a week earlier so who cares. It's funny to look back on that, with everything that has happened, and try to put myself back in the shoes I filled. I probably thought I'd be living in California again by now, working as a Marine Biologist and driving a Mustang. That was the dream, at least.
On that day we were ready to face the future together as best friends. Nothing could come between us. And then six months later, we stopped being friends. And we didn't just stop being "best" friends, we completely stopped any form of a relationship completely. I stopped it, effectively cutting her out of my life like the selfish brat I was and not thinking about anyone but myself in the process. I know I've written about it before and I'm not going to write about it again here.
After three years were wasted, we reconnected. And admittedly it took a while to get remotely close to where we were before, but it did happen.
2007
Katie moved away right when we started talking again, and our relationship was rebuilt through phone calls, chatting online, and EVENTUALLY text messaging. Because we're old and that wasn't always an option. There was a night when we were talking through something... maybe AIM, maybe MySpace, and she told me that she felt a person could have more than one soulmate in life. Drawn to one another, they complete one another when together... and that to her, I was her soulmate. And I felt the same.
Time goes on and you grow closer. You start to experience things, often very painful things, and you turn to a certain person each time. They help you through it, they lift you up, and you realize what it really means to have a soulmate. They are an extension of you in some way, the yin to your yang, and they just get it. Without it being explained, whatever it is, they just get it.
2011
Over the last couple of years Katie has been talking about potentially moving away. Her husband was casually looking for jobs in other states and I knew it was always a possibility that it could happen. Or that it would happen, I suppose. People change and their needs change and eventually I think it comes down to sink or swim time.
Early this year she told me her parents would be moving to Arizona, her brother and sister subsequently doing the same. It was only logical she and her husband move as well, seeing as there would no longer be any family up here in the Tundra. It would happen by the fall.
So with a timeline in place, I firmly blocked the event out of my mind. If I didn't think about it then somehow it was a little less real. I have friends, don't get me wrong. I have a network of Bests that I rely on for several random things at random times and in random intervals. Each brings something different to the table. But with Katie, it's hard to describe. If I had to try, I would say that she doesn't bring anything to the table because she is the legs that support it. My sounding board, my rock, my confidant, my trustee, my sister... whatever you want to call it.
Natural and easy.
And as more and more people found out, they would make that face. The eyes-widened-with-a-quick-intake-of-air-through-the-side-of-the-mouth face, as if to say I was facing the guillotine and they were worried for my safety. "How do you feel about that?" "Oh my gosh, what'll you do without her?" "Are you okay?" "Wow, that sucks." "Let me know if you need anything when the time comes."
It felt good and bad to hear that from people. They clearly knew who Katie is to me, that's good. They also treated it as if she was going to die and I'd be a widower, that's bad. It also made me ignore the situation even more.
2012
And then strange things start to happen.
The dinners together become longer. What was once a 45 minute chat over food now stretches to two hours. Visits that occur later in the evening no longer last two hours tops, they extend and reach to five hours.
It's as if the impending grand finale of a story has had light shed on it, and the two soulmates are doing everything they can to make it last just a little bit longer.
A few more words.
A few more laughs.
The devastation of your demise is not represented by rubble and debris visible to the eyes, your eyes, but only to your heart.
It becomes the divide between real pain and superficial pain.
Slowly, but surely, you find you're now only grasping at thin air. Memories and thoughts and questions and jokes seem to hover in suspension. The only thing in my head is "will I remember saying these things tonight after I haven't seen her for six months? Am I sending the right message with all of this? Is this what she will remember as our last in-person conversation?"
I control everything. I always have, I always will. I control the pictures that are put up of me, I control how people view me. You might think I'm naive to certain things, you might think I'm being casual and non-observant at certain points when you're around me, but I'm not. I am always hyper aware of myself and my surroundings. But with Katie I'm not.
I wasn't.
I never wanted to be.
After the hiatus of our friendship, the person she deserved to get to know again was the real me. No holds barred, no hidden agendas, just me. And our relationship flourished because of it. There aren't many people in my life outside of her that get to see that side of me... even if I wanted them to. I don't know why that is, other than it opens me up to being hurt by more people and that's something I'm not willing to do any longer. She knows the ugly side of me, a side I'm sometimes terrified to acknowledge, and she accepts it. I know I'll find that in another person someday, hopefully in a romantic sense, but for now I haven't.
Having someone like Katie in your life is a blessing of the highest order. Finding a person you can call your soulmate and know they feel exactly as you do... you can't beat that. Why would you even want to?
2014
I gathered all of the Bests through a sheer miracle (the schedules of six busy adults is a difficult thing to wrangle) to take some pictures. It would likely be the last time I would have all of them together for the foreseeable future if not ever again. I wanted to take pictures of us as a group, the way we had done three years ago almost to the day. I draw a certain energy from them and having all together at once is incredibly calming.
The biggest point of it was to have one final picture with Katie before everything changes. I hate change, I really do. As much of a proponent as I am for it, when change comes to my own life I tend to resist it for as long as I can. Change isn't always a bad thing, sometimes it can be a very good thing, but more often than not there is someone who gets hurt in the process. And this time it's me.
This time, I'm the one being left in a state when a friend moves across the country. And this time I know how it feels to be on the non-adventure end of the stick.
I am so happy for her and her family, I truly am. And I certainly know this isn't the end of our friendship by any means, just the start of a new part of the book. It's sad and it's difficult, but it's nothing I won't be able to get through. It's nothing our friendship won't be able to get through. That's just how soulmates work.
1999
This is the actual oldest picture that exists, October of 1999. I was flipping through the 8th grade yearbook a month or so ago and seeing if I could find anything of @caitcd and her husband to influence my speech at her wedding when I stumbled upon it.
I never would have thought things would turn out the way they did between us. How many laughs and tears we would share together. I never thought she'd be the very first person I'd ever come out to, certainly never believed she would influence me to become an author. But that part of our story has now been written and we can turn to the rest. I don't know what it holds. Part of me doesn't want to know what it holds... that's what makes it an adventure. I am losing a piece of myself when her plane leaves tonight, but I know where to find it when I want to feel complete again. At least I will have the option.
So onward we march to new lands, new scenery, new experiences, new laughs, new tears, new friends, new family, and in the end, new life. Sad and beautiful and happy and mesmerizing as it could possibly be. Onward.
I love you, Scoop. A couple thousand miles won't change any of that. Ciao for now (c:
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