Like this blog, so many things slip onto the backburner as time slips through the hourglass of life. The soap opera references are intentional, by the way. When I was growing up, so many of the women in my family as well as friends were all addicted to "the stories." Almost all were avid watchers of "Days of Our Lives." I, too, watched. But I always found it laughable that you could go a year without watching and be able to jump right back in because it was always the same people doing the same things and dealing with the same drama day in and day out. It's so stupid, I always thought. Even in the routine of daily life, things change. The idea that Bo and Hope would still be struggling to be together or that Sammie would still be up to her old hijinks year in and year out is idiotic. At some point, things have to change. So I stopped watching daytime drama altogether.
The funny thing is that I found that absolutely unrealistic in a fictional television show, but I fully expected it with certain friendships.
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| Christine (leaning in on the table), Chris, and me (back turned) |
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| Me and Andrea back in the day |
Then graduation from high school came and that was that.
I, like a fool, "fell in love" with an older man and moved in with him right around the time I accepted my high school diploma. While I was taking a year off to be with the asshole, my friends dispersed and went off to college. Christine went to New York, Andrea to the Lowcountry of South Carolina, and Chris ... my Chris went off to Virginia.
While I was making a complete wreck of my life, Chris was making a name for himself. While I was agreeing to butcher two children in the womb, he was winning hearts for Christ. While I was stuck in Limbo waiting to lose my third child to the lie of open adoption, he was graduating and getting ready to jet set to Tuscany for a year.
I kept in touch with Andrea the most, but I still tried to correspond through cards and letters with three friends who had obtained their college degrees and were looking to find their own place in this crazy world. I admit that I felt alone -- I had allowed a man to control me, tell me what to do and where to go. I left this man (finally) in late 1999. But, life had already passed me by. I missed out on college and friends and parties and ... life.
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| Chris and Pope John Paul II |
I moved into an apartment with Andrea and tried to assimilate back into the land of the living. She and I found boyfriends, fell in love, and went our separate ways. The man I met during this time turned out to be "the one." He and I married in March 2003 and currently have two beautiful children. Life is a struggle for us now and then, but we have never given up. I don't know what I'd do without him.
Well, through the wonders of Facebook I have been able to reconnect with so many lost friends -- the magnificent trio especially. Christine is happily married as is Andrea. Chris has been living all over Europe for years, very rarely making it back to the states. He's incredibly busy, so I always understood if Facebook message went unanswered.
He was back home for a few weeks for the Holidays and I felt extremely lucky to be able to see him for a few hours back in January. And, like a fool, I literally counted down the weeks until August and his return. It had been absolutely amazing to sit outside and just talk to him. Not as a priest, but as Chris. My Chris. The best friend that I knew back in the early 1990s, the one who knew all my secrets and always gave great advice. It was like a dream, being able to snatch back a moment of time from before I became such a fuck up.
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| Andrea and Dawn (Isabella's Godmother), 2004 |
So, as the days passed I watched as everyone else got the one thing I'd nearly kill for -- time with the best friend I let go so long ago.
Now, I should tell you that I am often overcome by periods of moroseness. And this past week just happened to be one of them. I have had a lot on my plate at the moment and stress does not bode well with those who tend to toe the line between semi-sane and overly melancholy. So, this ordeal with Chris hit me in the chest like a ton of bricks.
I remember reading "New Moon" and thinking that the way Stephanie Meyer describes Jacob sounded like how I viewed Chris way back when ... as well as now. For those of you living under a rock, the main character (Bella) sees him as a sun -- radiating heat and happiness. When she is around him, things are happier. Whole. The world is right. When she isn't around him, doom and gloom set in. In high school, Chris was my sun. He was the overly optimistic, extremely happy-go-lucky brother that I so desperately needed. He left a handprint on my heart that will forever be there -- like when a hot metal touches the skin. The mark is always there. But the kind of imprint he left if more visceral, more intimate.
The sad reality is that at one time he and I had different circles of friends. But now, we have different planes of existence. And therein lies the problem. When I hear that he's back in my neck of the woods, I automatically try to gravitate toward that sun, that warmth that I've missed for 16 years. I long for the friendship that we once had. I long for the easier days when my only worry was passing a biology test. But that is an impossibility because we have changed. I'm a middle-aged mother of two. A very typical South Carolina nobody struggling to NOT be another statistic, especially in this economy. And Chris, oh my gosh, he's this larger-than-life personality that has been touched by the hand of God, a world-renowned priest that will go far in the church. He was once MY sun. Now he's the sun for thousands. Perhaps millions.
So it should be no great surprise that I would get lost in the massive amount of people he must see everytime he's here. It's unfair for me to expect him to be Chris Smith, the savior of Pam because he is now Father Christopher Smith, leading the world to THE savior. Only, where I am, it seems that God doesn't go because I am too far gone. And all those other people, well they are "good" Catholics that are still in play when it comes to the afterlife. It should be no surprise that my oldest daughter, his Godchild, has never been invited to see him at any point. She, too, must bear the weight of my failed life.
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| Christine, Chris, me, and Andy (my husband) in 2001 |
But I don't want it to, hell I am kicking and screaming inside at the thought of just taking him off my Facebook friends list. Why is that one little click of the mouse so hard?
I used to think that soap operas were stupid for their repetitiveness. Yet, that is what I want in my friendships. I want to be able to jump back into the story and have it be the same despite the passing of 16 years. I want it all to stay the same.
But time doesn't work like that. Things change. People change. And the sand in the hourglass of friendship often runs out.
