Friends

If I have learned anything from recent life, it is just this: inhibition among dear friends is quite simply a waste of time. (Let me explain, lest you jump to the conclusion that I am promoting rampant drunkenness and rowdiness, excused if and only precipitated among friends. Though therein is another recent life lesson…but that is not for now).

I refer mainly to that inhibition of actions, a self-consciousness, we so often fall prey to when we are in constant company with those we most love. It is the brief pause in a phone conversation that turns an awkward silence into a premature goodbye, quick, before we are both left with nothing else to talk about. It is the mindlessness that deceives us into staying on the couch rather than braving the cold walk to our friend’s apartment because, after all, it is late and what would we do anyways? It is the festering resentment that we quite simply can’t be bothered to resolve because, in all honesty, it would clearly take too much effort to broach the subject and, as they say, time will heal all.

How silly all that seems now.

Now, a phone call is not mapped out, there is no agenda, no reason for the call. The call is the reason. The end goal is to be, however fleetingly, in the presence of the one called. Thus, all inhibition is lost. A prolonged silence is not a rift in the conversation or a breakdown in communication. Indeed, it serves more than words could. In that silence there is the fierce acknowledgement that to hang up, to rush a conclusion, would mean an acknowledgement of the spatial chasm between you and I, and that is quite simply too ugly, too raw a thing to acknowledge. And so we sit, the silence hanging, defying life’s paths that have so separated us, dear friends.

Now, a cold walk seems like such a trivial pain to keep us apart. What separates us now is a few hundred dollars and a day of travel, to mention nothing of Employment and that which it entails, and even in that there is barely reason enough to tether me down, keep me from visiting you. How I regret all of those spent minutes, wasted because of the weather.

Now, any quarrel or resentment seems as trivial as the tabloids. I can no longer afford the luxury of such triviality. To think that anything other than distance will separate us is seemingly absurd, petty nonsense. Inhibition, that feeling that makes one self-conscious to the nth degree, freezing the burning lump in one’s stomach to act in a manner true to who they are at their core, is a precious waste of even more precious time. If there exists that which would keep me from you, let it be nothing more than the inevitability that comes with living as adults in different parts of the world. And let even that be laughable.

This is what I say then: save your inhibition for those you care nothing about. All the time in the world can be wasted on them. But among those few, those of the inner circle, those who know you for you, those who deserve nothing less then the truth of your dependence on them, give inhibition no root. There is far too little time for that.