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June 13, 2007
But I need more than myself this time
Growing up and moving on in life sometimes means leaving friends behind. It's not that you care about them any less, but life and change get in the way. Some of my oldest and dearest friendships were formed when I was working at GlobalCenter eight years ago. The culture there -- everyone was young and new and fresh and ready to go places in life -- and the nature of the job -- shift work and team work -- combined and left us with more than a job, but an era in our lives. Since then, I've moved cross-country twice; gotten married; helped build a business; and have changed immensely because of those things, but I've kept those good times with me -- a touchstone for getting through the darkest days.
I found out today that a dear friend from that time is really in trouble with drugs and needs help. The warning signs were there, both when I saw him in person last October, and in phone calls and IMs since then, but somehow I managed to wall them off and ignore them. Being so busy myself, I didn't put together the snips and clips of his descent into paranoia and his personality shift. Maybe that's a cop out... 'being busy'. I didn't have free cycles to acknowledge his problems, and part of me still feels incredibly guilty about that. Even through that guilt, I know that there's very little if anything that I could have done to prevent this. He's an adult, thousands of miles away, and he made his own choices.
Tonight I spent some time mourning the loss of that great kid he used to be; the one with the promising future; the smart one; the kid with dreams and hopes and a life ahead, waiting for him. I hope the adult he's become can get clean.
Posted by jodikins at June 13, 2007 8:07 PM