Chris's MySpace has a blog entry about some girl he's grown obsessed with, a goddess by his telling.

Jeff's MySpace has a new picture of him standing against the backdrop of a park that we used to hang out in at night, rehearsing a play we'd written about our perfect, if not exactly storybook, friendship and budding romance.

Casey's LiveJournal mentioned he's back in Maine, and who knows if it'll be the last season that we're within a hundred miles of each other, except we're not within a hundred miles of each other.

Jeremey's number has been showing up on my caller ID from time to time, and I've shown up on his, without us having exchanged more than two dozen words in months, now.

Chad and I had a long-winded online conversation the other night about the past. It won't be followed up with anything that constitutes a present.

Ran into Jenn at Wal*Mart the other evening. We exchanged leitmotif promises to call and make plans that we won't make good on.

Elorza's in Chicago. The other night, he called and we talked for a few hours. I see Ben every now and then online, he's a travelling Respiratory Therapist now. Emily and I manage to make as much time for online conversations as we ever did.

A group of guys at work and I always act like one day we'll see each other socially. They see each other all a lot. I see them at work. I like them alright. Nice enough people to pass the time with, if I ever actually did.



My social life has become a string of seldomly occuring coincidences, catch-up conversations and good intentions. Memories of people, some who I have shut out of my life, some who have shut me out of theirs.

The majority of them, though, became slowly but surely de-prioritized while my relationship with Zack was blossoming. Tracks lost and bridges ablaze, largely because I wanted to spend every free moment of my life with him. Largely, I still do.


I have de-prioritized these people, gradually, in favor of the one I love.

In the wake of the one fateful night so elusively gracing these writings, I realize I have de-prioritized these people in favor of someone who I fear no longer loves me.



I ask him to convince me, but he can't. He tries. It's okay, I tell myself. I can go another day not knowing for sure, I can do it for a little while longer. I tell myself this because I know what it was like that night. I know how badly I wanted to believe, or wanted not to believe. I know what I was willing to give up.

But every night I spend alone, wondering what's become of the myriad of people who once surrounded me, or, perhaps worse, knowing, a thought plays over in my mind, a quandary that I fine-tuned the phrasing of one lonely evening right after the fallout, when it first occured to me that things had changed:



What does one do when left to reconcile the difference between the deals they're willing to live with in the worst moments of their life, and the life they have to deal with in between?




On with it.