Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Saudade

Picture source: Unknown

There’s no translation for it.
It’s the feeling felt when you miss someone, someplace so bad that it tears your heart apart.
Distance is life’s ultimate punishment
Your heart keeps that person close but your arms are too far to reach them.
Last night I went through facebook profiles and photos of people I knew…
The fact that I say I “knew” them in past tense is because distance has made sure that I no longer know who they are.
People change, grow and evolve… if you’re not there during this time, you’ll miss out on who they’ve become.
I sighed in awe as I compared the physical changes in the people I went to school with, some of which I haven’t spoken in years.
Doctors, lawyers… some of them became exactly what they said they would.
Others went in the exact opposite direction.
Nostalgia… the feeling felt on remembering and missing the past.
Nostalgia isn’t Saudade… Saudade is something else, something much deeper.
Saudade is what I felt when I saw my friends in their wedding dresses.
Saudade is what I felt on seeing pictures of their first children.
Saudade is what tore apart my heart at seeing pictures of the moments I said I’d be there for.
Because when you’re young you believe that nothing can tear friendship apart and that you’ll be there for every important moment in your friend’s life… and I wasn’t.
I wasn’t there for them and they haven’t been here for me.
Not that they haven’t been there in heart, I’m sure they were there in spirit…
But nothing takes the place of seeing that smile, hearing those words and feeling that embrace… Saudade.
It’s been a long time since I’ve cried the absence of what I left behind… friends, good friends… amazing people that life gave me the pleasure of meeting and which I left when I moved away.
They say it gets easier, they say you move on…
With the years you miss them less, you think about them less…
But then one night you remember them and your heart breaks as hard as the day you left them behind.
I don’t regret my decisions in life.
I just wish I could keep all my friends close by.
I miss you.