Thu 12 Mar 2015
An Echoing Refrain
Posted by autumnrouse under Feelin's and Stuff, Nostalgia
Comments Off on An Echoing Refrain
Every year on this day, for some years now, I have composed and sent a birthday greeting to the girl who was my best friend in high school. Though I haven’t seen her in person since I was about 20 years old, I still feel a connection to her that is tangible, and informs my life still in an immediate and meaningful way.
I can’t say exactly what motivates me to reach out over distance and through time to acknowledge her – to let her know I still think about her – I simply yield to the impulse and tell her that I hope things are going well in her life.
I would do so with other people drifted far afield in either temporal or tangible space, but something about her temperament and the quality of the friendship that once was between us makes the approach both easier, and I suspect considerably more satisfying, than other attempts might prove.
I am an inveterate sentimentalist, nostaligiarian, and sap. Even more than that – both in this instance, and generally reflective of my current frame of mind – once I have bestowed my love upon someone, it is essentially never withdrawn.
Dangerous this, for a girl who cannot help but believe in love at first sight, having been afflicted times beyond recollection. My heart makes up its mind all but immediately and ignores all evidence to the contrary, no matter how compelling it might be.
What I’ve decided, for a variety of reasons, is that this isn’t the shortcoming I have always thought it was. It speaks, not about the worthiness of the person upon whom I have bestowed this love, but the quality of the love itself. Rather than shame or chagrin that I have lavished this feeling regardless of merit, I am proud of my enduring capacity for love in the face of all challenge. That this love can persist through years, past separation, and beyond irreconcilable loss. It is a gift to bear a love like this, no matter its cost.
The returning call of that kind of love is full of music I am fully delighted to hear, time and again.