#9: auld acquaintance

It was so good to chat with you last night! I'm glad we're keeping in touch. It's not easy, I know, especially not with somebody who lives in the Big City. I know how easy it was to let friendships just slip away when I lived there, and I've seen many fall by the wayside since I left. Of course, it makes a it a little easier being that I visit the City once a year or so. But there are definitely people I have let slip away.

We share our struggles, you and I; we share the fact that we have struggles in our lives. I have a vivid memory of you sitting across from me at my little kitchen table in my studio apartment (the apartment you told me about) across the hall from your little apartment, when we were sharing deeply -- or so I thought -- and then you got suddenly silent, teary-eyed, and finally said I wasn't there for you. Or maybe you said I wasn't listening to you. I don't remember exactly what it was, but it's funny to me that I hold onto that moment so strongly. I wonder if you remember it?

The restaurant where we met is long gone and your career as an actress is less than certain, and my career as a playwright is on hold for the time being, maybe permanently. Sometimes I think that when I finish this novel I'll go back to playwriting. It seems an easier art in the middle of this mess. But I feel good about my progress, about my ability to stick with it. I wish you would work on your novel some more. I loved the chapter or two we read that night. You have a knack for storytelling. I think you have something there. But of course, I won't say you should do it because it's easy. Because it's not.

I'll see you next year, hopefully; I'm thinking about spring or summertime, perhaps. A week-long visit? I don't know. I miss being there, but when I'm there I'm ready to get back home. Home. I feel like I have a home now. All that time when I was going back and forth between New York and Tennessee, I didn't really feel like I had a home, I was such a lost soul. My struggles were so acute then.

You tell me I sound like I have a positive, healthy attitude about relationships and my issues. I think that's true, but it sure doesn't keep the depression at bay. At least I'm not drowning in it anymore -- chatting with you last night helped me see that; it's more like I'm on the beach and depression comes in with the tide, comes lapping at me in waves, gets strong sometimes but never unbearably so because I know the tide will go out again. (I guess I have a healthy attitude about my depression as well!)

We're getting old, my dear sweet friend. You're the one who brought it up! I have a gray beard, a belly I notice in the shower, the aches and pains of an aging body. I'm trying to have a healthy relationship with my aging, too. Happy new year.