Written in 2014.
Visiting old friends
There is something strange about visiting old friends.
You slip back into familiar places and conversations, but you are no longer quite the same people. The easy shorthand is still there, yet it sits alongside long pauses and small moments of recalibration.
Time does that.
You realise that friendship is not frozen in place. It stretches. It thins. Sometimes it loops back on itself without warning. None of this means anything has gone wrong.
We all move through life at different speeds. Different priorities take over. Work, family, geography and headspace quietly reshape the map.
What matters is not whether everything feels exactly as it once did. It is whether there is still respect in the room. Whether you can sit together without needing to perform old versions of yourselves.
There is comfort in recognising what has lasted.
There is also relief in letting go of what has not.
Visiting old friends is not about reclaiming the past.
It is about acknowledging the distance travelled and appreciating what remains.
Sometimes that is enough.
And perhaps more than enough, now.