Well, Goodbye Then.

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Have you ever known someone for a long time and then sort of just .... lost touch?

Sometimes it's easy.  You know, it happens naturally, with time.  You go from the thick of things to ... nothing.  It isn't offensive, really; it's mutual.

Eventually someone asks, "Who is that with you, in that picture?"  And you say something like, "Oh, that was this girl I used to know when I was a kid."  What's more, you remember the oddest things about her.  "She locked me out of my own house once, and then made faces at me through the window while I stood out in the snow."

Occasionally, you can't remember why you lost touch.  Or how, exactly.  You feel a vague discomfort in the idea that perhaps you should've tried harder to keep them in your life ... and then life goes on and you forget about them again.

The worst kind, though, are the ones you can't forget.  Sure, your lives have gone separate ways and you've made your peace with that .... but somehow, in the back of your head, you sort of wish they were still around.  There was this conversation you never got to finish, or a feeling you never fully explored.  Maybe you just hit it off - you know, those rare people you meet sometimes who just get you.  And, in turn, you really get them too.

But now, for whatever reason, it's over.  Simply and inexplicably over, if that makes any sense.

You'd think we'd learn to keep better track of each other.

... Or something.