files of memories

jordynt — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 05:40:00 GMT

Typey typey typey. Just typing right now because I think I'm having a panic attack and I'm trying to not and this helps.

I was talking to my friend today. She's this girl I became friends with in sixth grade (or possibly before then?) and pretty much one of the only BR friends I keep in touch with. It is interesting that when I talk to her I can feel like everything is right and kind of forget the not-so-good stuff. When I was in eighth grade I tried to figure out why I was friends with each of my friends - what it was that brought us together. And most of them now I think it was just that we had a good time together and went to the same school and it was easy for us to be friends.

Once I moved most of those friendships dissappeared, which doesn't make them seem any less real to me. I mean they were my friends at one point, but moving out of state always changes things and now I have different friends, from different parts of the United States.

I have a friend in Northern California, one in Florida, Connecticut (of course), and a few in Arizona, along with the friend(s?) I have here. And while I would love it if all my friends lived close enough that I could actually hang out with them, I'd much rather have the friends I have than a bunch of people here that are my friends just because I can actually hang out with them and not because we actually have good reasons to be friends.

It's like I have a file cabinet in my head and I have a place for each person in my life that has ever mattered at all, even the tiniest bit, for the briefest second, from the earliest I can remember until now. And all my memories are stored in there, sitting until I pull them out and examine them.

I open one file, marked MEAN BOY JORDAN and I'm in third grade (or was it first?) and it's been raining so that the road I live on is mud and the ditch is full of dirty water. Me and MBJ get off the school bus and start walking home and he keeps pushing me into the ditch, in the mud. And I don't even remember why he did it I just remember being mad at him and maybe crying.
Then there's another file, marked LACEY, and it's a girl I was friends with in kindergarten then met again in eighth grade journalism. And she's telling me she was in Mrs. Reinhold's class and I'm saying so was I! And she's remembering me and saying how she called me in the hospital and how was I doing now and did I remember? And I'm saying that I did remember and I'm doing good.

And there are more files, files upon files, and sometimes they open without warning and I am hit with a memory and the feeling of that memory. An UNFORTUNATE SERIES OF EVENTS t-shirt, pies in culinary arts, that annoying Fergie song (like they all aren't annoying), the awful school bus, an embarrassing moment involving a mistaken identity, a friend's mom saying I'm going to get diabetes when I grow up, a bracelet made of red hearts. And on and on and on. All these memories stored up and I just want to write them down or keep going over them so I never lose them because they all seem important, like they offer some piece of me to myself. Like somehow they matter.

I don't know, I just think it's not so much the big things that really matter, but the little things you sometimes have to search for and if you have an open mind they pop out at you but if you don't they pass you by. So much can be remembered in just the smallest memory, and a tiny incident can tell you everything you need to know.

on my distant friendships

jordynt — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 23:53:00 GMT

Over the last few years a remarkable thing has happened to me. Specifically to my friendships and the people on the other ends of those friendships. It began, of course, with the event that tears my life into two pieces. Both seperate and distinct: a before and an after, except that unlike in all those makeover shows, the before still seems a bit more appealing. And that event, obviously, is the move.

Before the move I had an abundance of friends. I was never popular, per see, but I was not popular in the best way. Or, as Emily Knox would put it, I was the best kind of popular. The people I considered friends weren't all extremely close friends (though some of them were), for the most part not people I would tell my deepest secrets to or anything. But they were good friends. I could count on them to notice when I missed a day of school, to let me borrow their notes, to always have a partner for group projects and plenty of tables I'd be welcomed at during lunch time. Outside of school there were the friends I had from church, the friends whose houses I'd visit, the friends I went to see movies with. Except for Mich who always lived on the other side of the country (which may as well be the other side of the earth), they were all centrally located in our cluster of small towns. They went to the same church or the same school, or both. I ran into them when I went to Wal-Mart and my parents knew their parents.

Then I moved.

And now, suddenly, the people I count as friends are spread out across the continental US. I've kept in contact with some of my Arizona friends, at least sporadically, but only two of the friendships have survived the effect of time and distance to become friends that I consider close. Apart from them there are girls I've met through Red, located in seperate corners of the US, nowhere near me.

Do I have friends here? Kind of. Not particularly close ones, none who can measure up to the friends I've known for years and years, the friends who know my whole history and with whom explanations are rarely needed. Now I mostly hang out with my little sister although on rare occasions there are girls I go to the mall with or to the movies with. But for the most part my friends are nowhere near here. And I try not to let that bother me. I try to remind myself that no matter where they are, they're the most amazing friends and I'm lucky to have them.

But it's hard to keep that attitude all the time and sometimes I feel lonely even though I know I'm luckier than most, and definitely less alone than most.

Your Smile On Fire : Meggo, my past life, musings

files of memories

on my distant friendships