01406: Ending the Weekend

Well, I survived my first weekend as a single man. And needless to say it was, for lack of a better term, interesting. And no, I didn't go on some wild spree involving hordes of other single me or some crazy shit like that. This is still me after all.

The weekend was about reconnecting with friends, or at least the friends that I could locate on such short notice despite the rather dismal weather. And it was certainly a good time and a rather healthy experience to boot - at least for me. I doubt I was terribly fun company since not even the blazing lights and heart-thumping music of Bed got me to do more than just stand around watching everyone else in the gloom. But that's why friends are friends and more than just the casual acquaintances who are only there for you during the good times.

Oddly enough, the experience of being with friends reminded me a lot of the movie Crying Ladies, or at least the part when Eric Quizon's character had to explain and re-explain to all the visiting friends and family how his father died. The weekend was a lot like that with every friend I'd encounter - the natural question of "What happened?" and then  the elaborate dance of whether or not I felt they even deserved an answer, what more the full story of how events unfolded.

And I've come up with a variety of ways of answering that fateful question. Practice makes perfect, I suppose? It doesn't mean it's a satisfactory answer - whether for my friends or even for me. But I suppose it's a relevant enough explanation depending on the audience - at the end of the day it's a largely private matter, as it should be. Only those friends from whom I want to seek some degree of counsel or advice are those that I choose to open up to more. And even then there are still varying degrees of disclosure that I practice on a case-to-case basis.

Needless to say, I have a lot of thinking to get over and a probably a lot more friends to talk to. Get in line folks - all will be revealed in time. Or maybe not.

The bad weather did have one quirky side effect - reuniting the three of us. The constant rains had Tobie offering to pick me up from Ryan's apartment and taking me home. At first I have to admit that I was a tad reluctant - a feeling that does leave me feeling bad for various reasons. But in the end I agreed and Tobie even made sure to pick up food for Yoshi to boot.

Initially it was agreed that we should all have dinner together and then Tobie would bring Prince to O Bar on the way back to his parent's place in the south. But given the weather, it seemed more prudent to have him stay the night, even though sleeping arrangements were a bit different since we had to scatter around the Sietch, to some extent. Now we're looking forward to breakfast together, and that's a good thing.

Just because we split up doesn't mean we can't be friends after all. The challenge is trying to map a new way forward and determining the next steps from there.

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