Speak, memory

I've kept a diary for years, an electronic one. Below is an entry dated December 19, 1994, about a year and a half after I graduated from college.

Hint: Even though it's in the third person, it's about me.

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He had close friends in high school. Hanging out with his friends seemed like the most important thing in the world, more important than school or family. Yet for some reason he was not unhappy when they all graduated and went their separate ways. It was too exciting that they were all going on to college, and besides, they'd get to see each other over holidays and summers.

And they did stay in touch very well for the first few years. Frequent calls and letters kept the friendships seeming fresh, even though a lack of daily contact made the friendships seem like relics.

But he still felt that they were the greatest friends anyone could have, and he was nostalgic for the time when the friendships were the most important thing in the world. Now, in college, he had new friends, of course, but these were different from the ones he had in high school. The new friendships were more formal, less warm. He thought this was because he was older; maybe people just close off as they grow up, he thought. And he went to a demanding college, so it often seemed that he just didn't have as much time for friends as he used to.

Then he began dating a woman seriously, and friends started to seem unimportant, almost a hindrance. Time spent with friends was time not spent with her or at the library. School and love were serious matters; friends were dispensable, even frivolous. The two of them had a future to plan together. It was them against the world, and friends wanted to tear them apart. He spent less time with his college drinking buddies. He also fell out of touch with his high school friends. He noticed that once he stopped making the effort to keep up with them, the friendships waned almost completely, so maybe he had been the only one interested in staying in touch all along, anyway.

Unfortunately the romance became nightmarish, and it took months of struggling for them bothm to realize it was not working out. He was relieved when they finally called it quits, because he missed the things he used to do with friends, things that seemed frivolous at the time. But to his dismay, he discovered that he had been altogether too successful in convincing his friends that he didn't need them anymore: he didn't have any. There were some people he'd kept in touch with, of course, but he hesitated to call others for fear of sounding desperate and clingy.