Rivers and Roads

It's been a busy summer and an even busier few months, which means I have not posted anything in what seems like forever.

But term has started and some things need to be written and reflected on. Last night we rewatched the season finale of New Girl. It's a good episode and a very nice season finale, the kind that fills you with excitement for the next season and a twinge of sadness because you're saying goodbye to your fictional companions for several months.

The part of the episode that really affected me was the closing seen. One of the characters is leaving for New York and in the scenes of his departure The Head and the The Heart's "Rivers and Roads" plays in the background. It's fast become one of my favorite songs since the initial viewing, but only upon yesterday's viewing did its full impact hit.

A year from now we'll all be gone
All our friends will move away
And they're goin' to better places
But our friends will be gone away

I have not lived in the same place for more than roughly two years since I left for Rice. Of course at Rice that meant moving from on-campus housing to off-campus housing, but even in the midst of those small moves, college is a period of revolving friendships. 

Gillian asked for pictures of things we were involved in over the course of the last 10 years (yikes that's a long time!). As I ended up culling my photo library of the duplicates and the blurry stills, I noticed the faces change. At first all of the pictures are of my group at Sid. At some point during junior year, Laura and Megan and Annie and Artemis and Tessa start to fade. I regret that once we were all off campus we seemed to lose touch a bit. We were all gone from where we were.

In junior year, their faces are replaced by Gillian and Patrick, Lauren and Jeff, Lauren and Mikey, Laura and Daniel, and the other friends I formed in MOB and RLOS. Scattered among these pictures are the few from friends at KTRU and various others from Rice that have faded into memories and periodic updates on Facebook and Twitter. 

Even then the faces that I know shift to Waco and Truett- to Jalon and Christina and Morgan and Monique and Lee Ann and Kathy and the lot, back to Houston, to South Main- to Mel and Jessica and Amy and Seth and Sarah and the dozens of others I don't have space to list, to the people I've most recently left. And then there are the new ones, people from Aberdeen. Pictures of Katie and Haley and Joy and Amy and Nicolle and Meredith and Dave, Gordon and Maddie, Sarah and Chris, pictures of people that make up so much of my now life.

And in between all of those are the pictures of family. My family, the family that I joined into over those 11 years, the newest addition of my niece. 

And of course Jack. It's funny how at some point you stop being able to remember what it was like before someone was in your life, how there is a single constant in the majority of your pictures. How much two people can change and age and grow.

But I realized that we're in a holding pattern of change. Next summer will come and we'll say good-bye to those in Scotland. Some are already leaving or have left. Friendships are hard to bear when your life is marked by the academic calendar. It seems that I've turned 30 and am still having to bear the grief of being friends with those temporarily placed in my life. I suppose that's the burden of academia, new faces every year come and go. Next year so many of these faces will be gone because we'll be the ones that have moved away.

I don't regret that I have this revolving set of friends. Each has made me a better person in one way or another and I wouldn't have traded their friendship for the absence of grief on our parting. And distance doesn't mean the end. I'm still friends with the same 5 girls I was in middle school (Sarah, Yusra, Megan, Jessica, and April). 

This is just the year I hate the most, the year of knowing my time in this place is limited. I'm excited for what comes next, but the sting of something being over always go with it. Each seminar I attend is a reminder of the number I have left. I suppose that's the price of a life in transition.

So to all that I've lost touch with, those that I just don't see or talk to often enough, and all of those I'll be saying good-bye to-

Nothin' is as it has been
And I miss your face like hell
And I guess it's just as well
But I miss your face like hell