It seems like I'm always losing things...keys, papers, money, friends...I've put in place rather efficient systems for keeping keys and papers and money in their proper places where I can find them, but friends aren't that easy. You can't keep a friend in the same pocket and expect it to be there every time you reach in. Friends are people, with lives and issues and obligations to third parties. And it hurts worse when you lose your friends than it does when you lose your keys.
To avoid the hurting I've put in place an efficient system; when friends suddenly aren't in the place I've made up for them in my life I give up. I sew up the pocket so that it doesn't seem so empty. I pretend to be blithely irked, or slightly disinterested, or in cases of great hurt I may even grow haughtily angry. But really I'm just clutching the pocket closed with all my might, as if all the warm happy friendliness I have will spill out onto the sidewalk, never to be recovered. The clutching gives me a similar false sense of security to the one I experience when friends do stay in the right pocket.
I don't know what to do when things change suddenly. I usually freeze, unable to move, terrified and quite positive that I am about to experience another loss. So many friends have come and gone...but it's still hard every time. I mean, it's hard for me when I lose a t-shirt at the cleaner's, so of course I hold my friends dear and clutch desperately for their hands in the dark.
What if one day they're not there anymore?
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