So long ago I don't remember when, that's when they say I lost my only friend
I am afraid of time. The way it passes and the ways in which it does not. There are a few moments, largely meaningless to the other players in them, that I am always living in; they never get very far from me and I have found I can keep the people that I love as I love them, and remember myself as I was, rather than who they and I have come to be, and the things I've lost in myself and others. I have a tendency not to settle accounts because of this; I can think of people I no longer have any reason to know and love them for a few spare moments that I have used as anchors for my memory. Slights and distance and failures of communication and friendship that ought to plague me tend to fall away into vast reserves of affection for someone who once sparked that sense of affinity. There are days when love runs out, but it tends to creep back in unbidden recollections that powerfully suggest to me that it's better to be patient and understanding with anyone you have ever called a friend than to try and close yourself...people come back to you in unexpected ways, just as they slip away. It is important that you see people as they and not as you would have them be; the inability to be honest about who you love and who you surround yourself with belies a certain inability to be honest about yourself as well. There are people I know that I am forever attached to through memory and experience that I sometimes have very little good to say about, but that is usually when I'm being particularly uncharitable, obstinate, and unwilling to admit my own faults; I'm sure there are days I would be hard pressed to find anyone with a nice word for me.