Again, I don't know how to write this without going into detail. This time though, the details are mine.
When I was 15 years old, on New Year's Eve, I had an epic fail.
And when I say it was epic? I mean it was EPIC...on so many levels.
It changed the course of my life...the course of the lives of my family, the course of the lives of a few of my friends. It ended friendships. It created new ones. It took me to new cities. It ultimately brought me here.
During that time, I met a woman, K. K was older than me - about 10 years older - and she had a husband and a young son. Somehow, she and I connected and became close friends. We helped each other through very dark times...the darkest of my life. She was the one who taught me about sparklies...finding them each day, grasping onto them for dear life, using them to make it through each day. She was the one who started me on the road to filling myself up with rainbows and kittens and bubbles and giggles.
We remained close for awhile. We lived in different cities though and so it was hard to see each other. There was no internet then...no e-mail...no Facebook. It became harder to keep in touch. We grew apart. We let each other go.
Over the last 22 years, I've thought about her a lot. I always wondered what happened to her, to her family, to her son. I'd sometimes look for her - first, in the phone book, then on the internet. I knew she'd divorced. I knew she wasn't going by her married name anymore. I remembered her maiden name but I couldn't find her. I finally decided to leave it alone.
Yesterday, just as I was beginning to feel the old familiar blanket of malaise and vague anxiety and sadness I always feel around this time of year start to envelope me, it happened. I was on Facebook, looking through a friend's friend list for someone. And there, right there, was K's son. I knew it was him. He looks just like I remembered his father.
To be sure though, I sent him a message and asked him if he was, in fact, K's son.
This morning, I had my confirmation. It is him. She's here. She's alive and well.
And I wept.
3 comments:
Congratulations on finding your long lost friend! I hope I have similar luck with a few folks from my past....
:)
good feelings indeed
Sweet! The hardest part is distilling where you've been and what you've learned over the last 22 years into something coherent and plausible....some of it won't be believed, I'll just bet. *laugh* Congratulations!
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