I knew my old high school friend, Cody, was getting married this summer. I was surprised I hadn’t gotten my invitation yet.
“His girlfriend probably isn’t letting him invite any of his friends,” my mom said.
“You didn’t receive an invitation because his fiancé holds is balls for him,”- my friend Andrew.
I reasoned either he wasn’t inviting any of the old gang, or he’s invited all of us and is just late on the invitations.
I have been very lonely lately. Each day is spent in my university library finishing the second draft of my book. The room I write from, “The Atrium,” is a large glass room that shows the USF cathedral, scathing landscapes of campus, and beyond the campus, San Francisco. Nobody is in the library during summer except for staff. And they all stay out of my little glass sanctuary. Sometimes the loneliness reaches a point, where when I hear someone enter the library (its that quiet), I get excited. I hope I then hear foot steps nearing the Atrium. To just “be” around someone else. But I don’t. On numerous occasions, it gets so lonely that I convince myself the silence is diving. Again and again and again. Like a black hole swallowing itself.
It would have been nice– more than nice to be able to be with the old group, even after how much time has passed, celebrating in Vegas. Hitting golf balls off the roof of a building in 101 F heat. A break from the silence that’s self-consuming.
They all still live in this same town. And even though our lives are a million miles a part, I liked thinking that if I was ever in dire need of company, they’d be there. That the past can act as a cushion. But it can’t. And they aren’t. A line in the sand has been drawn.
People have been dropping like flies lately, this is an extension of that.
And I am tired of guessing the endgame.