And then, suddenly one day I realize how far I have been away from my friends. Just one day I heard that she's been engaged and is going to get married soon, the one who appears to me to have no change, and all her life is like a lake, with no big waves. How far I had been aware myself that some of my friends are no longer friends, after high school years till now, 7 years. Sooner or later, it would be 10 years, with no difference. But in 3 years, people may have changed very much, and love and marriage sometimes only needs a few months to make it happen. Didn't I realize that I have been away from my friends, sharing nothing, hearing nothing from them while managing and living my own life? When I was younger, a few years ago, I was glad to be in the open world, to make more friends and to know more people. Now, suddenly what matters is the closed friends that I had. The ones whose houses I dropped by almost every day to go to school together, whose I ate breakfast at her home, whose house I had to stay over because of the floods, whose I know their families, parents, grandparents, cousins,...
I blamed them for not keeping me posted with their lives. They probably don't know my life either, and the ones whom I have concern about. Now, I seem like the person who doesn't have that much growth and change, watching my friends and their lives going by, disconnected.
Am I no longer the person they can share their lives with. Standing in Herengracht, I wonder if we are still the same, because they no longer share or know my life. Distance, with its unawareness divides people apart, or just they themselves go further away from each other. I questioned my life being here; yet now and here, it is my life, the life that I am aware of my happiness when I'm alone, or when I have someone to hang around with. Here and there, it is perhaps my life and different lives that are different. Somes are destined to be there, some are born to go, detached or connected, life keeps going.
