A Visit

It will never be like it was before. The carefree freedom that comes with childhood has come and gone and I childishly half expect to return to those years on Monte Carlo Place every time I am with Trey. We have passed through the teenage wasteland, and it was beautiful. Now I am face to face with a man who I shared boyish dreams with, half expecting them to never come true, but they have. He has married (married before me), followed his dreams, been true to his heart, and has copied no one to become himself. There are only traces of the boy I left behind in 1999. There are only traces of that friendship that was forged while living next-door to each other for eight years. I am forced to wander around and pick up the pieces of my friendship with him and run with them. We don’t get as far as we used to with reminiscing. There is so much in the dark…too much. We can only grasp for the friendship we used to have that adulthood and responsibilities have now stolen from us. I can tell our hearts scream with desire for things to be like they were. We were so close. Neither one of us took our friendship and shattered it on the floor, but each day, week, month, and year that have passed beginning with the day I moved away from Fort Collins has slowly eroded away what had been building up for eight years. I wrote back in 1999 that a part of me died when we left Fort Collins. I used to think that was foolish thinking, but it wasn’t; I couldn’t have been more right. Trey and I were that close for a reason. God brought us together. I wonder if God’s purpose for our friendship has expired? Are we just wasting time trying to jumpstart this old car? Friendship is so delicate. We didn’t mean to alienate ourselves, but we did, and in the end the truth is this, the way it was before, that was the part of my heart that died the day I left Fort Collins. How sad. I can’t change it. I can only hope that things return to what they were, but after seeing Trey today, that stranger that I considered a brother so long ago, I realize that the past we have is only attainable through those sudden explosions of remembrance, bouts of laughter, long sighs, and smiles. What lies ahead of us is completely up to us, and entirely unknown because it will be wholly different than what lies behind us. That isn’t what we want, but it is what we are getting. And I feel we will make do and see what the purpose of this next friendship serves.