It's ten years ago today that my friend Charlotte died. A lot has happened in those ten years, but just as much that was important happened before that, in the five or so years of our friendship. The traumas and discoveries of early adolescence. Midnight feasts. Small rebellions. I don't actively miss her any more, but I like to think of her, and to mark time somehow. I'm still friends with lots of our other classmates from that time, with a shared history and a stock of anecdotes and habits that probably seem weird and impenetrable from the outside. But it comforts me that we shared the bad things as well as the good; I know we still look out for each other, even if we haven't talked in months. Charlotte was the centre of so much activity when we were at school, and she still brings us together even now.
It's tempting to see reunions like the one we're having tonight as a chance to be socially lazy, to backslide into nostalgia and childishness. Really what I should be doing is looking at my life, at how I've changed, where I've been, what I've done... and why I've ended up in the here and now with a vague shadow of dissatisfaction lying over almost everything. I have true love alright, but where's the high adventure?
True Love and High Adventure
