Dear old friend,
You've been visiting me a lot lately while I sleep. In my dreams, you're almost always aloofāyou're nursing a wound from something I don't remember doing to you, or you're impatient to walk away when I try talking to you, or once, you acted like you didn't know me at all. When I awoke, I realized I couldn't blame you, at least not really... it's been so long since we last really knew each other that I'm honestly not sure there's much left of the versions of each other we used to know. I don't even know what you look like anymore... in those dreams, my brain just drops your teenage self into my adult life and I never think to question it.
I wonder, though: if you don't remember me, do you at least remember the winter when we would spend long nights talking in your car with the seats leaned way back? I'd lock the doors at work, you'd pick me up in your station wagon, and we'd drive down back roads until the neighborhoods disappeared, drive until the trees hemmed us in, drive until we reached the clearing where we had the whole sky to ourselves. We'd bundle up under blankets and try to sift through all the sadness we felt, try to dig through the rubble of how it feels when someone you love dies, try to determine if that melancholy was something that would one day change or if that was just how we felt, always had, and always would. (Have you found Phoebe Bridgers as an adult? The first time I heard the song "Funeral," my breath hitched, and it always always always makes me think of that winter.)
Or if you don't remember that, do you remember the winter when we wrote each other long letters? You were dark blue, and I was light blue (okay, medium blue), and once or twice a week I'd wake up to your missives from one frozen town to another. Would you believe I saved them all, me, the Marie Kondo stan who saves nothing? I wish I could share them all with you now. In one, you said this thing I really love: "I wonder if something me or someone I know makes will ever get old enough to stop belonging to us and start belonging to everyone and anyone." Do these letters belong to me now, if I kept them and you've forgotten them? Do they belong to everyone?
There are no winters in my life anymore, not here in Texas, at least not the real kind, no hibernal season-of-the-sticks when the sun sets at 4:00 PM and you fumble anxiously in the dark for some source of warmth, a blanket or a bottle of bourbon or a stranger's warm body or maybe all three. You know that, of course; you had a turn with these mild southern Januarys and still chose to turn on your heel and head back North as soon as you could. Sometimes I think that was the final nail for us, the last time we spoke, when I said how much I love this place and you looked at me like I'd joined a cult. Tell me if I'm wrong, but in that moment, I could see, a little, that you'd never trust my judgment again. Old friend, I don't entirely blame you. This place is beautiful, but it's a fuckin' mess, too. I wish you'd gotten to see both sides of that coin.
Truthfully, though, I also mean it in a metaphorical sense, that I just don't have those kinds of emotional winters anymore. I think some of that is the extra hours of sunlight, although a larger part is probably age and maturity... and maybe the rest is just Lexapro. Have you ever taken an antidepressant? It's a sort of weird experienceāfirst finding yourself in a world where things that had been crushing you feel so easy to lift, and then trying to find a level where the heaviest things don't crush you but the lightest things can still lift you off your feet. Sometimes I find myself wishing I could titrate it all, muffle all my feelings when it's late at night and they're trending anxious and lonely, and amplify them when I'm on the couch with a glass of red wine and a Taylor Swift album. (Would you believe I only cried once when I heard the last album? Did I even like Taylor Swift when you knew me?) Maybe that's just me on my own bullshit like always, wanting to choreograph every emotional moment for maximum poignancy and then turn on all the lights on set when things get too intense.
I know it's ridiculous, and a little self-centered, but sometimes I used to wonder if I lost you as a friend when I lost the ability to feel that kind of sadness, that deep blue ocean where your legs have been treading water for so long that they forget what it felt like to stand on dry land. On some level, choosing to fold it up and pack it away, to get some therapy and some coping skills, felt like a betrayal of our sacred bond, like a sledgehammer to the foundation on which you and I had built our houses. Am I crazy for thinking that? You once called me a used car salesman, back at a time when the idea of being happy felt like a hazy dream, and you were rightāI was spending a lot of energy trying to fake it. These days, though, I don't do any faking. I guess I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be until finally I became that person. Or he became me.
One last thought: I don't miss you anymore, old friend, but I do still think about you sometimes. I think about you and me on that dark hillside, linking arms, howling at the moon, and I wish I could send you every good vibration on this planet. I know that even if I saw you one day on this side of the fence, you might still turn your head away and keep walking... but I'd still love to catch a glimpse of you in the daylight.
Anyway, don't be a stranger, now.
With love,
even still,
even if only a little,














