And so it goes...

I had a really lovely walk in the hills yesterday with a friend. Wandering about in the sunshine and stopping and having a lunch in a pub. It was great to catch up and just wander along and chat. I do have a bit of a blister on one of my feet now due to wearing walking socks that I’m not used to but beyond that it was a good day.

Anyway, the main reason that I decided to take this week off work is because my friend who lives in The Gambia, is back in the UK for the week. I could have just taken one day off to meet up but figured I had so much leave that I might as well take the week off and find stuff to occupy me for the rest of the days.

We used to be really good friends and I suppose as far as S is concerned, she would say that we still are. But things have changed so much over the last few years that I think our friendship is a pale shadow of what it used to be.

S got married about three years ago and when she started to go out with the chap who is now her husband, I suddenly found that I had become a bit redundant. She had other priorities and those times when we would normally have met up, like when she went home to visit her parents, became times when she would see her boyfriend instead.

We talked about it and I explained that I wasn’t very impressed to be kind of pushed aside. She said she’d try harder to make more of an effort, but somehow we just continued to drift apart. We went from me spending Christmases with her and her family and seeing each other every few weeks, to seeing each other a few times a year.

Then about two years ago I went to talk to her about something really difficult. Something I knew she wouldn’t necessarily react well to, but I hoped that our friendship would stand us in good stead. It’s fair to say that she didn’t react well. She said something to me that I can’t be bothered to explain here but will always stick in my mind as showing how different we truly are. Our friendship did survive, but from that day onwards I realised how far apart our lives had drifted. How little she really understood me or what makes me tick. How much she liked everything to be ‘just so’ and to run with the regularity and predictability which, whilst perhaps comforting, means that you potentially know what every day will be before it even begins. To err from that path upsets her because life should be ordered and logical.

I sometimes think she expects me to be exactly the same person that I was five or even ten years ago. But to lose that ability to change and grow would fill me with horror. I don’t want to be the person that I was all those years ago. Not that there was anything wrong with that person but part of what makes life interesting and challenging is that we have the ability to change. We can change our minds, change our views, be more - or less - certain about things and so on. But that’s just normal life isn’t it?

So today we’ll catch up, she’ll see where I live and we’ll talk about all that she has been up to while she’s been away. Then she’ll go back to The Gambia and the thing is that I know I won’t really miss her because somehow our lives have moved on.