the ghost of a memory
Lately I've been thinking about memories and the past. Specifically, I've been thinking how memories can be, though are not always, like photos. Only bits of pieces of a person or event can be the focus, and the reality is not necessarily any part of the memory. Or, reality could be entirely what the memory is made up of, but it captures only a fraction of time and space, and therefore does not make up the entirety of reality, if that makes sense.
I have an old friend... a friend who used to be much more than that. We were married for every so briefly, something that I know nearly all of you who know me and who read this will likely be surprised to hear. We were young. I was just out of college, and he was just about to start his final year of college, or as he would call it, uni. It was a short-lived marriage. I moved to the UK for just two months or so, and then returned to the States to start my graduate program. We decided sometime during that first year of the program that we'd made a mistake. No big argument, mostly a heartbreaking understanding. It is the one break up that left me gutted and empty.
Anyway, that was over a decade ago, and he and I have managed to become friends again. It took years before we could talk (or, in this case given our geographical locations, e-mail). One e-mail a year for many years became a couple of e-mails, and over many years, this was increased to a few e-mails a year, and now, is a weekly if not daily exchange. Though very gradual, we've managed to build back, not what had, that's for sure, but a friendship that is reassuring. I think it's helped both of us realize that neither one of us was rejected. It was just the wrong time, we were young, first loves, and we rushed things and pushed them further than we should have.
That said, at times, I have to remind myself to remember that he is a different person than the one I knew, the one I loved. But, I love my friends, those I hold near and dear to my heart. Because of this, yes, I love him, but in a different way, but sometimes my mind plays tricks on me and I start confusing this new love with the old. It doesn't help, though, that when I first discovered that I was pregnant, one of my best friends went to my apartment to help me think things through. I told her that if I had a baby, I wouldn't date. I did make an exception, though. I said that if I were to date anyone, it'd be him, the ex of all exes. This was when our e-mail exchanges were every few months or so, so nothing like now. Still, he obviously never fell off the charts of my mind, and at that point at least, I equated him with that old love, the love I've never really let anyone have with me since. Not to that extent, anyway.
So, I treasure our friendship. It's been extremely healing to me. But, I hope I don't let that ghost of the memory of him get in the way of who he is now and what we've built after all of these years. And, I hope the same goes for him, because at times I notice that he needs to realize we're not the old us either. It's a new us. Although we'd always been friends, we'd never been just that. It's new territory, like making a new friend but having ideas about that person already, and sometimes being surprised by what you learn and telling yourself to not be disappointed with those things, because it is, in a sense, a new person, a new friend you are making, rather than meeting up with an old memory, a ghost of a person that likely was not really that person anyway...
I have an old friend... a friend who used to be much more than that. We were married for every so briefly, something that I know nearly all of you who know me and who read this will likely be surprised to hear. We were young. I was just out of college, and he was just about to start his final year of college, or as he would call it, uni. It was a short-lived marriage. I moved to the UK for just two months or so, and then returned to the States to start my graduate program. We decided sometime during that first year of the program that we'd made a mistake. No big argument, mostly a heartbreaking understanding. It is the one break up that left me gutted and empty.
Anyway, that was over a decade ago, and he and I have managed to become friends again. It took years before we could talk (or, in this case given our geographical locations, e-mail). One e-mail a year for many years became a couple of e-mails, and over many years, this was increased to a few e-mails a year, and now, is a weekly if not daily exchange. Though very gradual, we've managed to build back, not what had, that's for sure, but a friendship that is reassuring. I think it's helped both of us realize that neither one of us was rejected. It was just the wrong time, we were young, first loves, and we rushed things and pushed them further than we should have.
That said, at times, I have to remind myself to remember that he is a different person than the one I knew, the one I loved. But, I love my friends, those I hold near and dear to my heart. Because of this, yes, I love him, but in a different way, but sometimes my mind plays tricks on me and I start confusing this new love with the old. It doesn't help, though, that when I first discovered that I was pregnant, one of my best friends went to my apartment to help me think things through. I told her that if I had a baby, I wouldn't date. I did make an exception, though. I said that if I were to date anyone, it'd be him, the ex of all exes. This was when our e-mail exchanges were every few months or so, so nothing like now. Still, he obviously never fell off the charts of my mind, and at that point at least, I equated him with that old love, the love I've never really let anyone have with me since. Not to that extent, anyway.
So, I treasure our friendship. It's been extremely healing to me. But, I hope I don't let that ghost of the memory of him get in the way of who he is now and what we've built after all of these years. And, I hope the same goes for him, because at times I notice that he needs to realize we're not the old us either. It's a new us. Although we'd always been friends, we'd never been just that. It's new territory, like making a new friend but having ideas about that person already, and sometimes being surprised by what you learn and telling yourself to not be disappointed with those things, because it is, in a sense, a new person, a new friend you are making, rather than meeting up with an old memory, a ghost of a person that likely was not really that person anyway...