OLD FRIENDS

I am in Chicago...my hometown.

Last night I had sushi (Delicious, buttery, could stand up to any NYC sushi restaurant) with two old friends of mine with whom I have had similarly complicated relationships: I stopped speaking to Danny because I didn't like his girlfriend, Joey stopped speaking to me because his girlfriend didn't like me. And last night, all I could think about was how much fun I was having; how nice it was to be with people who had walked a ways with me on the long, craggy-rocked path I have hiked towards adulthood. It occurred to me that I meet people all the time, people whose emotional lives are undoubtedly pocked with the relationships that formed them, people who love their family and their old friends, people who stop a bullet for someone I will never meet.

I have met too many people now to give myself to my friends as readily as I once did. I am so quick to find fault, easily bored, difficult to impress. There is something about my friends from my hometown--It is one reason why this place, this gladhanded city by the lake, has such a hold on my heart.