Accepting the temporary.

As a college student, I've become accustomed to accepting that all goods are actually quite temporary. We're forced to move at least once a year. We live with furniture that we've either found in dumpsters or been given by veterans of the experience. We live with cutting edge technology that needs constant replacement or tweaking, despite our limited finances. And we make do with this way of life. It's a temporary lifestyle, and it calls for all things temporary.

But they tell us that people make life-long friends in college. Some people meet the people they will marry and live the rest of their lives with in college.

It is rare for me to keep close friends longer than three years. Either a fight or a move. All my close friendships die as quickly as they begin, it seems. This worries me quite a bit considering that I feel like I've made a lot of the first "real friends" of my life in college. This month alone, I'm losing about five of these individuals. One of them being AG, who I spent a significant part of this past year going on various sorts of adventures with.

And I've cried more in the past week than I have in months combined. But this has to happen. The cycle will continue. Sure, I can try to "keep in touch," but I suck at keeping in touch...and, inevitably, my friendships will deteriorate into those awkward conversations one has with people whom one was once dating a long time ago or whom one moved away from. "So, um...what have you been up to for the past five or ten years?" How is someone supposed to answer that question, anyway? Better yet, does the other person actually care about the answer given? Can they honestly care about it?

Tonight, sitting on a porch and snuggling, AG and I both confessed that we're not very good at "staying in touch." After a pause, and a chuckle, I said "well, this is ill-fated." And we laughed at the truth of it.

I feel like I did that to my dog, Louis, which is why I have such mixed feelings about having him put to sleep. "Louis! I know I haven't seen you in four months but DAMN have I missed you! Oh...so, uh...you're not feeling well these days? Oh...that's a shame..." My own dog and I are becoming estranged friends. When it comes time to put him to sleep, despite the overwhelming sadness induced by nostalgia, part of me is going to say "well, we were falling apart, anyway."

No matter how I feel about anything though is the important decision to accept things for how they are and push myself to carry on. That's all any of us can do.

This is all giving me a greater appreciation of stories that outline characters which have fallen into ruin since last they parted with characters who have not.