Gifts and Wreckage of the Past

Friendship over time

Posted by Mark A. LeBlanc on Aug 18, 2009

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I’ve been connecting with old friends on Facebook lately. I really enjoy it, it’s kind of like drunk dialing when it seems like a great idea to call people you haven’t talked to in years at 1AM and relive your glory days. I’ve been sober for a few years and now when I have the civil occassion to talk on the phone with people from my past, they have commented that my voice sounds different. When I tell them that it’s because I haven’t talked to them except when I was drunk for the past few years they are usually surprised. I can tell you, we alcoholics are masters of deception, so good we can even deceive ourselves.

My broader thoughts today are about friendship and how we define it. I don’t consider friendships at an end just because I have lost touch with that friend. I am interested in what happened since we last spoke or visited, whether it be tragedy or victory. Those connections, once made in my heart, are always there. I find that people’s habits and beliefs can change but one’s essential nature seldom does. As my lifelong friend Stephen Graybill once told me, you can’t make new old friends. He also recommended that if you are driving and hear screams, turn to the right and if you hear a loud scraping sound, turn to the left. Where else are you going to find that kind of wisdom, except from a true friend.

As a practical matter if I have contacted you and we haven’t spoken or visited for awhile, I don’t want to borrow money or stay with you or sell you Amway or MonaVie. I just want to glimpse into our shared experiences one more time and talk to someone that knows me in a way that no one will ever know me again, as I know them. I won’t drink with you and I won’t judge you if you do, I’ll sit right next to you and have a diet coke as we fill in the blanks of our memories. Did I REALLY do THAT? OH NO you have PHOTOS?

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