,            ____,         (                     21/10/01  anada451  ,
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  \ /               "Ya Gotta Have"               `.              ,  \ \ /  |
   Y--------                             ----------/`.          ,'-`----Y   |
  /                   by Infernal                 (            ; mEoW!@/|   '
 i________________________________________________|  ,-.    ,-'_______/ |  /
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   |____________________ Anada is cat-friendly! __)  |__\  `.___________|/
                                                  `--'   `--'

        Checked the caller ID when I got home from the studio tonight, sweaty
 and worn out and ready for a shower then sleep, and whose name popped up
 but yours.  Crazy, seeing it.  Sleep was forgotten and now I’m up at the
 darkest hour of night, pondering.  I mean, we’re not enemies, no bad blood
 or ugly fights in our decidedly uncheckered past for me to worry about you
 rekindling.  It’s just that you’d sorta faded, there was this series of
 silences between your words that got longer and longer each time, like your
 saliva had dried and your lips had gummed shut, until finally (without
 either of us noticing it) you weren’t there any more, and that could have
 just as easily been that.

        But you must have thought I was worth the effort of trying to speak
 again.  Of course, you didn’t leave a message, only called.  Did you realize
 you had nothing to say?  Were you secretly relieved when the phone kept
 ringing?  Did you feel a cool breeze soothe the alkali sweat on your brow
 when you put the phone down, still silent?  Or were you taking a calculated
 risk that I’d have caller ID, and making a subtler ploy, batting the ball
 slyly back into my court, taking the initiative but refusing to shoulder the
 hard part of any awkward reunion?

        Or do you think of me as the one who let those silences fester?  I
 don’t rationally think it was one person – it never is in these situations.
 But I know that in my head I blame you for it, and feel a sense of reproach
 at you for not making more effort to keep us close.  Do you feel the same
 way about me?  Was the call-but-no-message your way of shaking me out of
 inaction and making me call you?  I could see myself doing the same thing
 tomorrow when (if) I call you back, especially since I won’t know what to
 say if your machine picks up.  And God knows I don’t want to be caught in
 mid-message if you pick up as I’m talking – that’s like getting blinded by
 headlights when you’re trying to cross the road.

        How silly and stupid.  We’re like people on opposite sides of a
 river, trying to mend a bridge by lobbing bricks at each other.  I do miss
 you, and I would like to talk to you again.  I hope we do get back in touch,
 and then stay in touch, but will we?  Is it going to be a situation where we
 both try way too hard, and the effort becomes resented more than the
 friendship was valued in the first place?

        I’ve been thinking about friends lately.  There are ones who’ve
 drifted out of my life, like you did, and I wonder if I do enough to keep
 people near me.  I tend to hold my friends to unrealistic, unfair standards
 (standards I would never meet if they were judging me by them), and I would
 like to stop doing that.  It’s not a very friend-worthy thing to do.  I want
 to keep my friends close, and let them know by my actions that I appreciate
 them, and that I’m honored to be part of their lives.  I’m not talking about
 being the most popular boy on Main Street; I just want to stop meeting
 worthy people and then moving away from them.

        So you wanna go have lunch tomorrow?  I’ll call you.  And I might
 leave a message.

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 \ -.- /                                                              \ -.- /
 `-.^.-' (c) 2001 Anada e'zine                            by Infernal `-.^.-'
   /"\ ________________________________________________________________ /"\