spring cleaning.

I was scheduled off from work in the early afternoon on Monday and planned to meet an off-again on-again estranged friend of mine for coffee after his perplexing text that included the phrase nothing bad, just wanted to catch up. I sat waiting at a patio table at my old haunt, the primary local hipster coffee, dessert, and kitsch establishment under the cover of the large thong-looking fabric shade they have shading the outdoor portion. The wait time bridged me to the border of boredom, so due to unforeseen plumbing issues on his end, I arranged to meet him at his house instead.

We don't talk like we used to anymore. The rhythms have changed and in some ways, so has the subject matter. We conversed for the better part of fifteen minutes before the Roto-Rooter guy arrived and another five before my friend had another reason to go outside. I continued to wait for the actually something bad to hit, but it never did. Instead, who should I come to see strolling across his front lawn but my long-gone friend from Hawaii, making a completely unexpected and curiously fanfare-less appearance like a reoccurring character on LOST, simply showing up out of context off the island.

She and I go back five years, although most of them were at distance and with limited to no contact. When I first met her she lived in town and we were working on a movie together. To a degree we were the only sanity to one another during those months. Upon meeting, the conversation struck so easily, I was beyond myself. There was an intriguing connection between us, and one that had times of questionable boundaries, primarily in subtext and deeply felt eye contact.

Before Monday I hadn't seen her for about two and a half years. The last time she visited, we strolled downtown for coffee and conversation. There was something about her that brought out truth in me. I would think of my response to something she said and then find myself speaking more fully and openly instead. She drew out unexpected aspects of me from small cavities of my being. There was something about her that I always liked being around, because of who I felt like and ways I felt toward her. I even recall considering making moves on her. I can really see a lot of this in retrospect. My ex was rightfully jealous.

I see a lot of this with my twenty-twenty glasses on. A year before, to disappointing results, I tried to reunite myself with a flickering flame from my college days. For so long I don't think I believed in divorce, fundamentally. I can see that now. I can rally behind the cause of emotional abortion, but would have never wanted it myself. You can wish it upon others all day long, but once it's in front of you it's a war of wills and the loss is extreme.

Fast forward to Monday. Everything has changed. I didn't feel one ounce of the connection I once did. Everything she represented during those brief snippets of time during the latter years of my marriage has become fulfilled by my own sturdier sense of self and a woman in my life who I connect to in a multitude of more profound ways than I have ever had with another person.

I spent maybe seventeen minutes with my old friend. There was talk of several familiar names going to my ex's for a potluck that night. For all of the sordid emotional baggage of that situation, she was always my friend not hers. That's certainly one of the evidences of divorce. Emotional debris. Passive-aggressiveness prevails. Facebook makes it easy to distinguish, and to prove a point. Friends reveal their colors very quickly, even if they'd deny it. Choosing one over the other, acting indifferent to your passing presence in a store, or merely disappearing all together. I am currently rebuilding my friendships from the wreckage of all of this and have begun to prefer the collective that exists now. I wouldn't go back to what was once my life for anything.