Out of Sync

Galveston Island Far West End by Finijo

Maybe I don't change enough as time goes on. It seems to me that everyone around me is changing, moving, shaking... I am at a loss. I'd like to think that I have grown and matured over the years, but lately I find myself lying awake at night wondering what is happening, and if I am somehow out of sync. Over the years friends of mine (people I love very much) have changed drastically. They have changed from nice to unkind, sane to psychotic, gay to straight, and liberal to conservative. I had one friend that changed from straight to gay, but the only one surprised by that metamorphosis was him and it had no effect on the friendship. The gay to straight change, on the other hand, came as a shock to all who knew him and he walked away from all of us.

It's not that I dislike change. I think I've rolled with the changes in my life fairly well, but I also think I am basically the same person I have always been. My core values are roughly the same; my outlook is not really different than it was last year or 20 years ago. What has me perplexed is how and why people change the essence of themselves. I question whether they ever really were the person I thought they were, or if they somehow hid their true nature.

I have tried hard to cultivate long-term friendships since I was young, and I feel like I've been successful in that endeavor. I still have friends from junior high and high school, and I've kept my friends from college. I've even hung on to friends from each job I have had since I finished college. The people I call friends share some common ground with me, even if we aren't identical in our ideology.

I don't know if it is age, PMS, or some unknown variable that has me assessing my regrets in life, but they seem to center on the friends I have lost. I am surprised at how my failures (numerous as they are) are not among the things I regret. I see the value in every failure I've had, but the loss of a friend is altogether different for me. The loss of a friend leaves a void and I have no real understanding of what happened to cause the changes that broke the friendship. Without answers, I find myself questioning my ability to judge character, which is not something I have questioned in the past. I'm left wondering if I misjudged from the beginning and I was somehow deluded, or if it is normal or in vogue to reinvent one's self at some point in our life and I am just odd man out in that experience. Whatever the answer, the feeling is disconcerting and I am hoping it passes soon.