[the ballad of us]

a circle that completes itself. i knew you first. you now know me first. i guess people really are in your life for a reason. i guess people find their way back to you for that same reason. when you were gone i was lost, sad and confused. how could this huge force of life be there one day, and simply disappear the next? ten years later i've discovered that's not really anything so amazing. sadly, it happens all the time. people you love. people you need. people you once thought you knew so well, easily walk out on you one day and you have little say in the matter. in your case, you were pushed. strength, tenacity, will, brought you back. kept you around. ten, twenty years ago i knew what we had was special. yet, for whatever reason, that didn't keep me from taking it for granted. your departure was as simple as that, a word, and nothing more. but i still felt you long after you were gone. always floating around the edges of me, of all of us. that phone call on new years eve in '94. you on the other end. me wanting nothing more than for you to ask for me. me pretending that i could care less. cut to all of those years later. me sitting in the parking lot for a good hour, scared to death to go inside. on the phone with the boy, my very own cheering section. always. bullies and exes were nothing, you were what i feared the most.

"come on, just go in. ms. k and the others are in there waiting on you. you didn't drive all that way to sit in the parking lot and talk to me all night. you could have done that from home."

he was right, as much as i teased him about it, he usually was. i took a deep breath. killed the travis. felt like vomiting. and walked inside. and there you were, the last person i wanted to see. the only face i could make out in the crowd. a hug. an offered beer. and that was that. an apology and a clean slate all in a matter of seconds. and we spent the remainder of the night side by side. and pretty much the year that has followed that night. why you welcomed me, us, back without so much as a question is beyond me. time, age, maturity. but you did, and i'm forever thankful and happy. we are what we are. forever changing, forever flawed. but the ability to look past that, or see through that, is something only a true friend can do.