Sunrise in my lovely city.

Re-Uniting

Let’s say you’ve been out of touch with someone for a very long time and then one day, they decide that they’d like to cross that burning bridge and be friends again, or at the very least, touch a little base.  I used to think it wasn’t possible after a certain point.  There’s this threshold that I envision I guess; that once you’ve crossed a threshold after a certain amount of time, you simply can’t reconnect with someone you once knew without feeling like you’re basically re-knowing them completely.  Let’s say that threshold is about three or four years with absolutely no contact.  And after that, you’re stangers.  Because a lot can happen in even a few weeks, let alone a year or more.

Anyway, I’m a different person than I was when I was 18.  When I was 18, the world that I currently live within, comfortably, was a maze of newness and exhileration; that of being in the city and taking buses and navigating my way around, knowing which end of the city was north and which was south, feeling out what kind of interests I had and what kind of person I was, and who I would be.  When I was 18, I was a bad student (actually, a REALLY bad student – luckily for me though, my work was sparse and relatively easy for a first year work load), and in the end, I turned out to be a pretty great student.  And writing and the world of authors and blogging and wanting to win the Pen/Faulkner award weren’t even in my vocabulary.  What DID I want to be in first year?  I think I still wanted to write, but that dream seemed really far-reached.  And I had no idea that in five years’ time, I would have written the first draft of a novel that’s kind of decent and be giving myself willingly to words every single day, pretty much.  I used to draw all the time, too.  And I’ve kind of given that up almost completely (though I go through little whims and phases now and then).  I listened to different music, had a different lifestyle and different friends… in short, four years has gone by and as I’ve mentioned I’m sure, time and time again, an entirely different person than I was when I first moved here from Jasper.

So what do I make of seeing someone again that I only saw or heard from, really, when I was just on my way to leaving that 18-year old version of myself behind?  It’s odd to think about that kind of encounter to me; it’s like a blind date with someone from a past life.  I don’t know how to describe it.  All I can envision is excessive reminscence and sharing back and forth, a few adventures and happenings worth note from the past four years.  But is there TOO much to tell sometimes?  Because TOO many stories leads to TOO many explanations as to how you got to those adventures in the first place.  And then you’re basically re-telling your entire life from the past 1600 or so days.

It’s interesting that something like this hasn’t really ever happened to me so the surreal aspects of it and the awkward aspects can’t be felt by me in a way I can really relate to.  So it should be intersting if it comes to pass.