Mes Amis

January is, so 'they' say the saddest month. It's cold, it's windy, and it is way too long. We  all start out with more resolutions than the United Nations, and a week later we are back in the same rut(s) that plagued us in December. Maybe time doesn't pass, but we do. Maybe time is standing still, and we are the ones moving forward (in theory), and the name of the month on the calendar, and the year makes fuck all difference in the grand scheme of things.  One friend of mine says that he suffers from SAD, i.e. seasonal affective disorder, which I always thought was his way of making a joke. As it turns out, SAD is a real disorder, which explains of lot of his behaviour. Theories abound that the weather has a much larger affect on our mood that one would think, I've never cared for those theories. After all, rain clouds are just that rain clouds, they should not affect how angry, happy, or sad I am on any given day. 

I made exactly one resolution this year, but that is a tale for another time, today's tale is about my friends. Two of them to be exact, the two friends that I have 'lost' this year (and we aren't even out of January). To be precise neither of them is 'lost'. I know exactly where both of them are, where they both live, where they both work, and I still have their digits programmed into my phone. They aren't lost in the Jimmy Hoffa sense, they are lost in the we no longer can be considered friends sense. Those who know me, know that I am not a man overburdened with friends. I know 'of' a lot people (many of them through my job), I know 'about' very few people. That is a big difference, and I allow very few people to know about me. I tend to make friends badly, but the one's I make, I generally keep around.

These two 'friends' had both been around for a while themselves, and until this month there was no real clouds on our friendship horizon. Then, they both changed that, and the dark clouds rolled in quickly. Luckily for me one of them is too stupid to understand why or how they lost my friendship, and the other probably doesn't give a shit. Neither one is to be considered a great loss, after all, their actions are the reason for the ending of our friendship(s). I doubt that either one will care overmuch when, or if they realize they are no longer involved in my life. I am quite sure (in fact, I know) that they have lives of their own, lives that are full of other friends. More power to them, I hope (mostly) that those other friends can look past what I consider to be their perfidy, and continue to be friends with them. I can not and will not.

Being a man of such few friends, the loss of two people from that list is a bit harder to bear, but it is a simple fact that me and these two people can not be friends anymore. Theirs was no act of great betrayal, and I did not have to pull any metaphorical knives out of my back. It was more a drifting apart rather than a shearing that sundered our friendship(s). I've yet to decide whether to delete them entirely out of my life, their numbers are still in my phone, but I will not extend the first olive branch of any attempted reconciliation. It is not that being my friend is any great shakes. I imagine (if I were to attempt to imagine it) that in many ways these people could be better off without me in their respective lives.

Those lives will continue to rumble along, and I doubt that the speed bump of my former friendship will slow them down one whit.  That is actually my hope, I do not wish these two people ill, but I am no longer to be considered amongst their well wishers. I doubt they will be replaced on the friend list, but I realize that at the rate of losing two friends a month, I will be totally friendless by spring.