Somewhere in a span of 4 years, I whittled my circle of friends down to a handful. To date, of that handful, I can say with true solidity, that I have 2 that I am wholly and truly comfortable with.

At some point, things became more about me and less about how many people knew me and I'm glad of it. I think the only way to discover tepid relationships is to leave people in the past where they are and see who catches up.

So when did the familiar suddenly become so confusingly new?

I found myself blinking into her eyes as a searched for something to say. We HAD been close but through time, something, somewhere deteriorated. We were left with blank stares and an even more vacuous conversation. I would search my memory for something mutually interesting and only find memories of conversations past and oddly enough, emotions engrained within them. These were feelings of intimacy, affability, and familiarity -- all accounted for, but for some reason, could not be summoned into the present.

How does this happen? Divergent paths?
The degenerative nature of time? Maybe just my innate aversion for things in the past. Maybe the sum of all of these things.

There are things that I am glad of since I left highschool though:
I no longer care about having people dislike me.
I no longer feel pressure to be overtly accomodating to people I don't like.
I can tell, right away, who I want close to me and who I don't.

It's quite a relief.