Written when I had no internet access

I spent another 2 hours at Dave’s Coffee today. It has been my hang out of choice recently, mostly because I can check my email there and distract myself. I would be far more content if I could get my own computer online there, but sadly, that just isn’t meant to be.
Joe and Melanie came over for dinner last night. I made the most kick-ass roasted chicken EVER, and risotto and asparagus, and then we ate chocolate chip cookies and told stories and laughed until late at night and it just felt good to be home. It feels like I haven’t been away for the past 3 (almost 4) months. I forgot about every single day spent in a cocoon in a hotel bed, miserably wondering what everyone at home was doing, scouring the blogs of everyone I know for some inkling that I was missing from their lives, and the void hadn’t been filled by someone else.
I think that’s what irks me the most: The idea that I can be replaced. I know I just can’t, etc, etc, and ideally I’d like to think that my vast charisma, personality, and wit would make me irreplaceable . But the fact is, that’s bull. I only serve so much purpose in my friends’ lives, and if I can’t be there to fulfill it, then someone has to be.
I will always be insecure about my friendships. It’s just not in my nature to take for granted that they will always be there. I’m not the kind of friend that does, so I don’t assume that my friends should. Therefore, if I don’t make myself available, then it’s only logical that they will move on. And even that is more logic than my friendships should truthfully deserve, because where is the logic in friendships like mine and Melanie’s?
We have known each other since the 3rd grade and lost and found each other SOOO many times during the course of our respective lives. But there has never been any doubt that even though she is married and well on her way to being grown up, she can just fall back into the routine of being friends with me. That’s who we are. We didn’t speak for YEARS, not because we couldn’t or didn’t want to, but because there were other, more pressing issues on the table, like her domestication and my career. (Ew. I don’t like that word! It’s not a “career.” It’s still just a job, until I say otherwise.)
Or me and Joe. We have known each other since we were 5 years old. We rode the bus to school together, and we weren’t always extremely close, even in the later years. From 4th through 8th grade, there were the Joe-less years, when he went to St. Michael’s and I was at Chariho. Then in 9th grade, when he came back, all of a sudden and out of nowhere, we were friends again. 10th grade, we were wrestling match buddies. 11th grade, we took drivers’ ed together. 12th grade we started hanging out at non-school events. When we started college, we pretty much clung to each other because we didn’t know anyone else. There were even times during the college years when we would go for months without really speaking, because there were other more important people in our lives at that time, but we were never NOT friends. At this point, I can’t (and don’t want to) picture what life is like without him in it. But someday, we will both move on and he will get married and have kids, and I will have a house and lots of cats and blue hair.
And I will call him and say “So how are the grandkids?”
And he will say “Just starting college! How are your 52 cats?”
And I will say “Driving me bonkers. I forgot that I hate cats.”
I constantly need to remind myself that you don’t need to speak to a person everyday to stay friends with them. It’s just that, when you spend as much time alone as I do, a day without speaking feels more like a week or a month. Being a country away, or even a few states, creates so much isolation if all you have to look at is hotel art, and all you have to interact with is a computer.