a long time ago, we used to be friends

i had a friend once, a very good friend. he and i bonded quite a bit in some very weird ways that made me (and i think him, too) feel as though we were long lost twins separated at birth. it seemed that we thought very similarly, and we cracked each other up all the time.

we always lived very far from each other--continents apart, literally. but still we managed to get together about once a year. i was particularly fond of his mother (and, i believe, she of me) and it was a great pleasure in my year to visit him at her house.

i don't have any profound thoughts about man/woman friendships and whether they're possible or what the role of romantic attachment is. but that never seemed to be a question for me and my friend, which frequently struck me as odd, but there it was.

he got a serious girlfriend, and they got engaged. he wrote to me to tell me that she had asked him to not be in contact with me anymore. hurt, perplexed and infuriated, i told him that they both sounded like insecure twats.

we haven't spoken since, and that was about three years ago. since then, they have gotten married and had a baby. now, he has a book coming out on a popular trade press, the kind of book that seems destined to get a lot of attention, and i am bracing myself for reading about it on CNN or something. i am still friends with people he is still friends with. i don't spend a lot of time thinking about him, but every once in a while his name comes across my radar (as it did recently) and i cringe a bit, remembering his hurtful comments and my reactionary name-calling. i'm not really ashamed of how i handled it, and i am not really appalled at how he handled it, but it was an ugly moment that i'd rather not relive.

while i have some snide things to say about his public persona and some of his choices, i do still miss our jolly good old times, and his mother of course. and i can't help but feel a weird sense of existential estrangement, because i still feel like my friendship with him--indeed, he himself--is a part of who i am today, even at the same time as i observe his public persona blowing up to be somewhat cartoonish, as all public personas must seem to the people who know the persons behind them. and yet i know making snide comments about the cartoon really has nothing to do with anything.

it's just kind of sad, i guess.