Old Friends.

As a nineteen year old undergraduate, my world is in constant flux. Major changes are frequent, jobs are come and go, and friends will enter and leave your life like cars through a car wash. What's most interesting, though, are the ways in which your old friends change.

My circle of friends from high school is spread out across the country. I have one friend not even in the country, studying at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.  We were a close group of guys who all planned on pursuing a life in the arts, be it the cinema or the theater. We were ready to claw up the most cutthroat of industries, reach the top, and reconvene, laughing together at the adventures that got us to that point.

As senior year was coming to a close, our group was shattered by tragedy. Our teacher and long time mentor in the film department at the high school passed, having hidden his struggle with a ravaging and brutal cancer for months. We all dealt with it differently. I coped by helping the others, giving them a shoulder to cry on, and assisting in whatever way I could. Everyone in the school was in mourning, even those who hadn't known the man, but my friends were absolutely devastated. One friend, whom we will call Alex, was halfway to Los Angeles to start an internship with a film company when I broke the news to him. He had a falling out with our mentor just a week before, and they had never cleared the air. It tore him apart.

My other friends had not done very well either. Ian, who was destined for Chapman with a Dean's Scholarship, scarcely spoke for weeks. Others ramped up their drinking and recreational drug use in an attempt to cope. Weeks later, I would crash my car into a rock wall and blame it on slick roads.

We graduated a month later, healing, hopeful, and ready for the future. Most spread to the coasts, attempting to lead a promising life in Los Angeles or Manhattan. I delayed school by a semester before joining Alex at the University of Utah, studying film like we had always planned to do.

Alex was very public about his discontent with his life. His first semester was plagued by binge drinking and poor grades, as well as a nasty breakup with his girlfriend of a year. When I arrived in the spring he was a mess, hopped up on pharmaceuticals and chain smoking cigarettes, avoiding classes and any semblance of authority. I tried to reason with him, to show how he needed to put his life back together. He would listen to what I had to say and then simply ignore the advice entirely, blaming his ex-girlfriend for all his problems. In the time that I had left him he had lost most of his moral decency, trying to use material pleasures to replace the gaping holes in his heart.

I was charitable and empathetic with his situation, but I could do nothing for someone who would not listen. I had to leave him in his filth. At times, there are people who, if you let them into your life, will bring you down with them. I was not ready for that to happen.

I scarcely spoke with him for six months, until just the other day. The day after Thanksgiving, I had promised my friends who were in town I would enjoy the night with them. It was an enjoyable affair, until they had decided they wanted to go to Alex's house for a party he was having. I tried to desist them but they would have none of it, dragging me along.

The house was full of the degenerates I had associated with in high school, and always placed myself above. Most were actually on the back porch smoking cigarettes and marijuana, staring at the ground with glazed, drunken eyes. I found Alex out there, half a cigarette in mouth. He had obviously imbibed heavily that night, barely able to stand his ground, but stood up straight when he saw me. The glaze in his eyes was replaced with a frosty, distant look, lost in a storm of old memories.

"You hate me," he kept rambling. "You don't speak to me for months. You abandoned me. Why the fuck are you here?" He repeated this over and over again, the alcohol causing him to forget himself. I don't hate you, I said. I just couldn't deal with it. "I'm making something of myself," he said. He had several gigs in California. His life was amazing, he repeated over and over. I left him when he needed me most and had no right to come to him when he was back on top. I didn't deserve the friendship. And it was true, I had abandoned him. I had selfishly broken our friendship because I refused to let his troubles affect me. When he turned away from me though, I saw him as he was- a disheveled, pathetic, desperate human being, the same maw of morality I had left months ago. The old friend I remembered was dead.