Last month, for Emily's birthday, I wrote her a song. She says she liked it, that it rivaled her girlfriend's gift to her (which was a very expensive long weekend in New York). Just now, I was thinking about it, and I wondered if she'd written an entry about it in her old LiveJournal that I always forget to check.
Turns out, about a year ago, she posted in her LiveJournal about how she's now posting in a wordpress: http://loneliess.wordpress.com. I think it was about six posts ago now that I pointed out how I feel inferior to wordpress users, but I'll say this: Emily has jumped around to, like...four different blogging/journal sites since high school? I've written a few others here and there, for different purposes, but I've stayed loyal to this site. I like that.
I like to think that me and this blog have a relationship the way I have relationships with so many of my friends: maybe those relationships don't always get tended to, but they've lasted, nevertheless. Through the good, the bad, the sometimes years of neglect. They're still strong and meaningful today.
It's a sticky wicket, though, to figure out if that's really true.
In some cases, it's demonstrably not. People who my communication has fallen totally off with, to the point that I've even deleted them from my Facebook wall, or vice-versa. (It's so weird how this totally modern invention, this website that I barely even visit anymore, has become, somehow, the bottom line of whether the bonds of friendship are still at all intact.)
But then there are people like Jeremey and Elorza, both of whom with I have 15+ years of friendship, and both of whom I feel like there's been an understanding, in the past, that that's not really going anywhere, even if we don't talk for months.
Jeremey, right now, I feel pretty confident about. He will still occasionally text me, apropos of nothing on my end, with some incredulous rant about a Buffy the Vampire scene. Or he'll stick a song lyric on my wall. I told him that I was pregnant about 6 or 7 months in and invited him to come meet the baby, and he did, a few days after Ezra was born. All in all, I think it's solid. I'm sure whichever one of us dies first, the other will manage to be at their funeral. To make some kind of snarky eulogy.
Elorza, I don't feel so clear on. The last time we exchanged any back and forth at all was the day Ezra was born, I think. I texted asking if I had the right number, and he emphatically texted back that I did-- even without my identifying myself or specifying that I was looking for him-- and that he had seen pictures of the baby on Facebook and..."congratubabylations!!!!" was the exact word.
Oh, and apparently he wished me a happy mother's day. So THAT was the last time we talked.
Two days ago was his birthday. I knew it was his birthday because, you know, we've known each other for 15 years. I didn't have to wait for Facebook to remind me-- except I wasn't completely, 100% sure. So I puttered around for a while without texting him. Then later, I noticed on Facebook that he was thanking everyone for the birthday wishes. Somehow, that took the wind out of my sails.
I find the Facebook birthday thing kind of frustrating. By and large, I know my friend's birthdays. I don't need the reminder. But since I HAVE the reminder, I have no way of really being distinct from the pack of people who respond to every single birthday that comes up on their newsfeed with some generic wishes.
This year, I took my birthday off of Facebook about a month before it hit. To, you know. Give the real friends a fighting chance. I don't really have a lot of use for birthday wishes from someone I was in a play with in 9th grade, anyway.
The moral of the story, as meandering as it is, is that I don't really know where Elorza and I are. I know I still love him. I trust that, in some capacity, he feels the same way. But I don't know anything about his life anymore, and he knows very little about mine.
I think part of it is that he became a friend of both me and Zack, in a way that no one else really was. Elorza was like Zack in so many ways...they shared self-destructive habits and thought processes. I remember, once, when I was talking to him about the upcoming divorce, I said to him, "He's so much like you. You wouldn't want me married to you for the rest of my life, would you?"
He, of course, said "no." In this instance, I took at as a complement.
I feel guilty about this, but I probably shouldn't beat myself up. If I remember correctly, in the last few years, I've written him a few e-mails that went unanswered, despite him always indicating that he'd do his best. I remember asking him what was going on in his life, and getting little to no reply in return.
I feel like, suddenly, I'm very worried for him. I think, in my mind, lately, I've made him into a healthier, happier person than he ever really was. I think he's doing fine but...he IS just like Zack. And Zack is doing fine, I guess, most of the time.
I don't know. I should try again with Andrew. I should try harder with Jeremey. I should reconnect with dozens of people with whom I had long work relationships and budding school-based friendships. I should know where Emily is blogging in any given year. I should tell some of these people I'm writing this blog again-- that's really who it's for, in a way: the Elorzas and the Jeremeys. People who I really want to have know what's going on in my life, even if we can't talk as often as we used to so I can tell them.
Back in the day, I think both of them read almost every entry. Today, I really doubt that would be the case.
Emily had a reference to her "BFF" on an entry in her blog. I honestly don't know if that's me. I can't, for the life of me, think of who else it would be, but it's honestly just too embarrassing to ask.
I suppose that Emily is my best friend now, but it's been sort of a revolving cast. Obviously, the Jeremeys and the Elorzas don't really qualify now. But what about Jeff, who I still see fairly often (if not recently, due to a back injury of his and, you know, a baby of mine.) What about Zack, who is probably the most important person in the world to me, and can't be technically classified as anything but a friend anymore?
Emily, Zack, and Jeff...they're not BFFs. They're family. Plain and simple. And I guess Jeremey and Elorza are too, just...more cousins that you see once a year, rather than brothers or sisters.
Ugh. It's midnight. I don't know what my point is, but I've been writing too long.
If you're out there, Jeremeys and Elorzas and Emilys and Jeffs...I love you. Obviously. Wherever you are or whatever your doing, I'll be at your funeral if you're not at mine.
I mean, unless I actually die first but you're, like, out of town or not a respirator or something. I don't know. This isn't the delicate ending I was hoping it would be. I'm feeling a little bit albatross-y, here.
Day 16. On with it.
