I've been thinking about the past a lot recently. It's come to me in dreams. Some of them just silly little reminders of people who were once a large part of my life, others haunting images that tell the tales of past and future selves, and how they meet in the middle, or maybe not at all...
Obsession with the past is never a good thing, and I shake these things off, because it's necessary. All the same, I feel slightly emotionally exhausted from trying to reconcile my life now with the life I was living just 12 months ago. Am I the same person? Do I want to be the same person? Is it weird that the most important people in my life now are slightly different? Should I be scared about the future, because of the change?
Sometimes I really think that Poland was all a dream. Did I really live there? Did I really use to get the train and the bus on my own in the dark on a Sunday night, travelling from town to town, not speaking the lingo? Did I really have those zloty in my purse, instead of pounds? And have that weird fish salad thing that they sold in the little shop downstairs? It all seems like a crazy fantasy that I made up when I was bored. Then Sue or Leanne or Ana or someone drops me a line, and I have to accept the fact that I did live with Sue and Ana, and I did work with them both along with Leanne...otherwise how else would I know them?
Then I remember the others I met in Poland, and how I may never see any of them again, and this really deeply saddens me. These people walked into my life, they made an impact, and then they disappeared. And for some reason I feel everything like it's a big blow. Maybe just because I'm in a reflective mood, maybe because I've always found it difficult to let go, or maybe because you never really realise how much you relied on a network until it's not there anymore. I had to make a new network of friends whilst on the continent, with my family physically far away....and now even though I'm close to my family again, without the network there just feels an absence.
Maybe that also explains my utter fascination with the life of one of my friends, who, I hope with all my heart, does not class herself as a former friend or just 'somebody that I used to know'. See, she really was someone I could talk to anytime about anything, even if I hadn't seen or spoken to her in months. And I could always rely on her to come round with food and drink and a big smile for games and giggles at my place. Now I see her life only through pictures on Facebook, and she even looks different. I dreamt about her: there were two of her. One looked like I remember her, the other looked like her in the new pictures. Old friend introduced me to her new self, but I didn't feel the connection - it didn't really seem like her at all. My head couldn't connect her, this persona I see on the Internet, with the person I used to know. I know it was just a dream, but I can't stop thinking about it. Does that person still exist? Yes, I'm sure she does, but I feel quite scared, quite alarmed, after that really scary dream, as though she has been replaced by an imposter. (It should now be noted that directly following this encounter in my dream I went upstairs and found a panda in the bath. I'm not really taking the meaning of that all too seriously, so perhaps I ought to take all of the dream with a pinch of salt?)
The point is, with her seeming to slip away from my life too, when I used to rely on her so much...it seems bizarre, it seems strange....and the absence is sorely felt.
Even though things in just the space of a year have changed so dramatically, it doesn't mean that things have changed for the worse. I'm happy and I've grown. It's remarkable that the people who now belong in my life include some people who I never thought would play the major roles that they do. In fact, instead of focussing on the friends who I've had to leave behind, even just because of geographical barriers, I should really be focussing on the new ones, because they're just as important.
By no stretch of the imagination could my heart ever really leave behind those friends I made in Poland, or elsewhere. Even those people who left my life by choice have left their mark and I doubt they will ever be removed. It just makes up another part of me, teaches me important lessons and enables me to understand humanity a little more. I've left the light on and the door open for these people, in the hope they might return. Maybe they never will, but at least I gave them the opportunity.
In the meantime I'll just be grateful for everything I have, because I'm privelleged to know and be friends with some fantastic people!
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