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Life doesn’t stop when you move away. I had this thought, assumption, hope--whatever you want to call it--when I went away for school that everything would always stay the same, that maybe the world shut down when I turned my back and drove in the opposite direction, and it was the same when I moved to Georgia. But I come home to find that many things have changed and progressed. Among them, my sister has been married for a year and a half, nearly. I only saw for brief moments glimpses into her relationship with her husband before their wedding. For me it often seems as if they are still only dating, however now they share a bed and live ten minutes away from my parents. She called him her “husband” the other night at the dinner table. It was the first I had heard her use the term. Of course I’ve known he is her husband, but to hear her say it was strange still after these many months.

There are other things, too. Boyfriends and girlfriends when there weren’t any, pregnant bellies, lost jobs, promotions, houses, people who have moved away or are moving away, or have passed away. And as the circumstances of each person’s life change, so does their world–who they are, what they will become, and who will be there to see it all happen. Being that our worlds are all interconnected with one another, my world is changed, too. These new circumstances create distance between you-present and you-past and every bit that comes with each of them. One finds himself curious about those who once were his closest friends, why they don’t make sense anymore or simply why he doesn’t know that particularly about their lives. Certainly he should know that.

posted by Cameron Lawrence at 01:54