  I've been on a yearbook kick all week, waiting for my new one to arrive and more importantly, to read what people write in it. Why do we do it to ourselves year after year? Why do we record our feelings for one another on its pages, just to look back later and see that things aren't the same. I pulled out my yearbook from last year to look through it. The cover is scarred from Rini bashing Tom over the head with it.
The inside cover is filled with convoluted writing, stretching across and around both of the pages and the one that follows. Three pages essentially filled up by one person. And what hurts most of all is to know that at the time she meant everything she said about our friendship. Now though we are strangers, two people who pass in the hall and occasionally wave. "one thing that I want you to know--if you don't know anything else, it's that when I'm sitting alone in my room and thinking about my friends-the real ones- your face is one of the first to come into my mind. " That is no longer true, we no longer know each other. Friendships fade long before the ink does, long before the memories do.
Will I be looking back next year at what you write and think the same thing? Does Chris's comment that "the group is finally solidifying" still true? Or have we simply become stuck, mentally drifting apart and only close by proximity? When was the last time we piled onto a swing? The last time we went to a movie? The last time we had a real conversation? Its been too long, we've grown up and we seem to be moving apart. Our minds seem to have rewired, this one to that one, this one to new friends. The wires may still tangle between us, but the strength that once was there seems to be gone.
We sit outside on the hill quietly. Maybe the night and seeing the end is getting to me. Maybe these feelings are all in my head, or maybe I'm just trying to comfort myself because everyone else seems to have moved on and I alone am left behind. I loved our group, loved eating Thai in the tree house, loved huge water fights, loved late night conversations about superheroes and person Y. But when was the last time all that existed? When was the last time we were all that close? It was last year.
My best memories come from the gathering at Erica's the day before I went to camp. The goodbye cupcakes I had to buy cocoa for, the really weird movie (Donnie Darko), the hammock mess that turned into a water fight and killed my cell. But when I came home it was different. We had gotten used to not seeing each other everyday, to only talking to one person at a time. And now that's where we are, little pockets of what used to be something much bigger. And at this stage I'm leaving.
I'm leaving with things in the air, with no answers. I'm leaving not a group, but individual friends. What will I come home to? What will be left for me to pick up and carry on? In many ways I have moved on and that scares me even more. Instead of having a group behind me I have tenuous ties to many people all over the place. That makes it harder to gather, harder to fell secure, yet at the same time comforting and hopeful. Right now all the lines are tangled. I hope to have them untangled soon, because if I don't the knot will just get worse while I'm gone. Here's to hope. 
