we still kill the old way

Every now and then, I'm compelled to listen all the way through Lostprophets' Start Something.

Every time that happens, I think about when I used to hang out with Brian, and how much enjoyment (?) and / or satisfaction we gleaned from doing absolutely nothing. We'd listen to this album, drive around, maybe ponder a fine point or two of life, leave the occasional trail of beer cans on the side of some random road, and ultimately conclude it was time to go home around 3am. Most of the times, it was all pointless. Sometimes, dangerous. Still, I feel like I enjoyed it nonetheless.

As summer starts to stir, I find myself thinking about how different this one is, or at least looks like it will be. Namely, the formerly inseparable old crew. Looking at us now, it seems like the only reasonable cause for us all to be in the same room would be a funeral. I start wondering, how meaningful was my relationship with each of those people? The thought crosses my mind that maybe those relationships weren't all that substantial, if they seemed to dissolve so easily. Did we all spend all our time together, was the group dynamic the only thing we had going for us? Even though a year or two isn't that long, so much water's passed under so many different bridges, and that makes it easy to look back and make blanket statements. Statements which, in turn, make it easy to forget details, and make it easier to deal with that loss of friendship.

Tonight, I caught myself looking back, resting on certain memories with more than a passing glance. Heh... I think I'm not alone in knowing that a part of me will always live in Mike's dad's basement. There were occasional guest stars, but the cast remained the same, usually. There wasn't a one of us who hasn't seen the other laugh, cry, throw up, get naked, fall in love, fall out of love. We all knew each others' various faces, even the ones most of us didn't show other people. Sure, there are tons of people who would describe their senior year of high school / first year of college the same way.

But, I can't think of a single person in that cast to whom I never bared my feelings and pleaded for help, or vice-versa. Whatever happened, everything always worked out okay. No matter how ugly we were on the inside, we still loved each other, and stuck at one anothers' sides. We're talking about the kids who knew me as a neurotic closet-case with a taste for Jack Daniels and demolition DDR, and the habit of saying the wrong thing one time too many. I'm talking about the kid I secretly envied for his occasionally self-destructive inability to give a damn. Or the kid whose boundless generosity often pushed her own concerns to the back burner, leading to problems. Or the kid whose passion for inane, loopy ideas was as often as subtly annoying as it was exhilarating. Or the self-professed asshole who would only publicly drop that facade only for prospective romance, even though closed doors tended to reveal that puppy dog we all knew was there. I could go on too long with these, so I'll take it on faith that you get the point.

I'm pretty sure than anyone who even made it halfway through Psych. 101 could easily name a personality disorder for every single person I just described. And the "misery loves company" adage, at first glance, couldn't fit a group of people better. But it wasn't like that. Two or three of us would go somewhere one day, then a different set would go somewhere else the next day. We didn't need to be all together in one place to have fun, and forge great memories. Get us all in one room though, and we'd all just play off one another.

If you're familiar with the physics behind a nuclear fission reaction, it all makes sense. Pared down to the absolute bare minimum, it goes like this: A fissile fuel atom breaks down and throws out a neutron or two. Which then hits another fuel atom, causing it to fission. Releasing more neutrons. Lather, rinse, repeat. Energy everywhere.

Even if we were in uninspired or otherwise foul moods, sometimes one joke was all it took to get that reaction going.

(As an aside, looking down at iTunes and seeing this makes me feel like at least something about my thoughts tonight was cosmically intended.)

But, to address the question I posed earlier, my relationship with each one of them was perfectly substantial. And the fact that we're all orbiting different planets these days is a lot harder to reconcile than it should be. One never likes losing friends, especially for idiotic reasons. Although, my perspective on things might be different, because I didn't have any blood feuds erupt between myself and anyone else as life started dragging us off to our respective peripheries.

Jinah and I were talking tonight, about how we all know we miss the old times. And I realized, even if we were all in the same place again, doing the same things, it wouldn't be the same. You can only stand on a mountaintop for so long before you eventually have to worry about where dinner's going to come from. Even if we all forgot about the personal differences that have popped up over time, I think those spontaneous nuclear reactions we loved so dearly wouldn't happen so readily anymore.

We thrived on uncertainty. Sunday off was a requisite for partying Saturday night. Even though we could all theoretically be up for work or whatever, it was always more exciting when we were wondering just what the next day would hold. Any given Saturday night could be considered a microcosm of our lives at the time. None of us had "real" jobs. Community college was barely on the horizon, and when it came, it hadn't hit that shit-or-get-off-the-pot point where you're forced to seriously consider your future. When the future could be anything, the present is unquantifiably more exciting.

So even if we were all kicking back with some drinks, and being collectively stomped by one person in Halo 2, we'd all have that worry of where dinner's going to come from lurking around the corner in our minds.

But that's not how things work in the real grown-up world. People don't stop calling their friends because they get jobs. That's only supposed to happen when they have kids.

We all watched each other start to realize just who the people occupying our shoes were. And after that, we all witnessed each other learn to walk. Aside from lousy time management, there's no fantastic reason why we can't still walk together every now and then.

So, after waxing poetic about it, I think I might do something about it.

I don't know why I felt that was appropriate, but I did.

You know, I had other stuff on my mind before I started typing all this. Thankfully, most of it's taken the backseat it's generally more suited for. Except, I'm really disliking my new work schedule. I don't think I like the idea of Sunday and Monday being the new Saturday and Sunday, respectively. Even though Monday makes a good Sunday (everything's open, and it's easier to circumvent my broad, deep hatred of real Sundays), Sunday makes for one shit-bomb blow fest of a Saturday. Real Saturdays don't exist anymore, at least not in my world.

Bedtime.

(DB) out.