After 3 years, I got in touch with my gf again, someone I have known for like 15 years. It's just me, always getting caught up with work and over the past 15 years, we have lost contact on two occasions, including this last fiasco. I wouldn't have called her coz I always thought that if my close friends were in need of tending, they will call me, regardless. What I didn't bargain for was that in the age of mobile technology, no one bothers to memorise phone numbers and if the cell phone was misplaced, so were all the contact details. This is what happened to her - she lost her cell phone 3 years ago and was waiting for me to call her.
I called her simply because someone I care greatly for, asked about her, some weeks ago, and my reply was that I didn't know where or what she's up to. He didn't say much to my answer but that alone got me thinking and when I did have time to at least make a decent social call, I scrolled to her phone number. If he didn't ask me, I wouldn't have bothered, seriously, because this gf of mine is like that, free n easy and manages whatever the situation dishes out to her.
We met for tea yesterday and it's really great to see her. She's obviously not doing very well because her ex-husband decided to load more crap on her and the custody of the kids. Their case is pending at Family Court - same ole accusations. Her daughter has been asking about me, naturally, since I was their second line care-giver. She will bring the girls over this school hols.
In my life, I have 3 very, very close girlfriends who know me too well because our relationship spanned over broken marriages and relationships from like some 20-odd years ago.
Perhaps my having lost my best friend (in a car accident) when I was in my 20s, did something to me - that I'm so afraid to have best friends I grow attached to, for my emotional sanity.
So I now have all of them where they have always been - and hopefully, we won't loose touch again. It's important to keep in touch with people who are meaningful to us and it's important to take the trouble to care. I would have lost this one through sheer habit of me, not making a phone call - it's always been that my friends call on me for social meets, not the other way around. I'm dysfunctional by experience, but they understand because they know the causal factors and so I'm always forgiven. Not a good reason to continue being like this, but I have not healed yet.
I know I need to thank him because if not for his question, I would still be wondering what happened to this woman. We don't need many friends, we just need the few who stay with us through hell and high water.
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