Old Friends

I turned my back
I said goodbye
But it seems my heart stayed behind

Close to midnight in a quiet office when all that can be heard is the clicking sound on keyboards as the late night operators insert data into the computers.
Work is far from my mind and I should’ve left two hours ago.
Instead I sit listening to old music whilst reminiscing on old memories.

Everything But the Girl is playing, and through my headphones a song tells me “love should hold old friends”.

Is that what makes me think of you at this strange hour?
I’m satisfied that I no longer think of you as often as I used to.
I’d like to believe that everything that linked my memories to you have burnt into scattered ashes.
Yet, I still think of you ever so often and I wonder what it means.
I no longer remember you with hurt, with remorse, with love or even with hate.
Nowadays I just remember you with that numb sensation felt when you stare at a painting or an old photograph that represents nothing and everything.

The day I get acquainted with this album, you broke my heart. You left when you should’ve stayed – you even said so yourself.
I know you would’ve stayed if I’d asked you to but I didn’t what the decision to be mine to make – I didn’t want to feel what I’d already begun feeling.
I didn’t want to give that moment much importance.
I wanted you to stay – you didn’t.
What a fool I was… but had I been given the chance to do it all again would things have turned out differently?
I try not to wonder about such things…

The music shuffled onto the next song: “…and I miss you, like the deserts miss the rain…” – it had been the only song I’d recognised from the album when you first played it for me.
I miss you…
Correction – I miss the man I believed you to be, the person I thought you were, the friend I thought I had in you.

A cold shiver rose up my spine as I remember a dark night in an airport that felt too big, too crowded. Lost in the crowd, I had never felt so alone and abandoned. I sat on my suitcase and cried all the suppressed tears that had build up since I’d discovered that I was hopeless in love with you… somehow I knew right then that I was headed for pain, never to recover, you wouldn’t catch my fall… I didn’t mean as much for you to bother and you couldn’t be counted on as a friend either.
You taught me that people have the importance to which we give them – The pity in the eyes of those that saw me weeping atop a suitcase only accentuated my feeling of worthlessness. But you’ll never know, you didn’t bother to find out and now I have nothing to say to you… because the knowledge makes no difference to either of us now.
I get irritated with myself just for wondering if you remember me.
Do you?… probably on the days my name is mentioned… but probably thought of only in the sense of a lost member of your fan club.

My thoughts are interrupted by the song that touches me the deepest and as I listened, a knot forms in my throat as if to agree with it’s title: “I don’t want to talk about it”
I wish I hadn’t.
I wish I’d never written you that letter or wonder of its existence.
It doesn’t fit in with your world or the feelings you define to live with.
Where do you keep it? My tension rises at the thought that someone else could’ve read it, with any luck, you’ve burnt it already along with my humiliation and every trace of my existence – that shouldn’t be to hard, there are plenty substitutes for distraction in your world.
A voice from inside tells me nor to regret that honesty that I would’ve regretted far more if I’d hidden it from you. But pride reminds me that perhaps less would’ve been lost if I’d kept it to myself.

I sigh as I close the photographs I’d been looking at and promptly shut down my computer.
We’re never going to dance again, we’ll probably never laugh together and we’ll definitely never talk the way we used to.
I now understand the concept of the end of all things:
Even when all is over, the memory keeps something alive that can´t be extinguished.
Is that what I have left over of you?
To a stranger I would name this bond, friendship.
But we’re no longer friends… or are we?
I’ll always remember your birthday; remember you when I dance certain songs and when I think of you, I’ll always see your face clearly, your smile, your eyes.
If you ever need me, I’ll probably be there long enough to help you out…
But I don’t want you in my life.
I don’t want the heartbreak and the disappointment that come with you and I’ll never back down from the decision that saved my soul from perishing.

We’re not friends but neither are we enemies.
We’re far from acquaintances but no more than colleagues
We’re not passing strangers nor do we truly know each other any longer
We’re two people with a given history and that seems to define us as:
Old friends.