Whatever Happened to...?


When Ryan didn't answer the general e-mail I sent out announcing my move away from Boston, I waited a couple of weeks before deciding to call him, to try and set up a final drink or coffee or something to say goodbye.

Rather than calling me back, I got a short but polite e-mail saying that he didn't have time, would be out of town, and he hoped that I went on to have a nice life.

Years ago, when Dan and Ryan and I emailed each other long letters all the time, I used to print out our letters to each other, three hole punch them, and put them in a binder in chronological order. I did this with most of my friend's letters that meant something to me. But with Dan and Ryan and I, we wrote each other so much, for so long, that I had two entire 3-inch binders full of letters. Letters of shared hope and joy and grief and possibilities.

After eight years of friendship, Dan and I stopped talking to each other six months after I moved to Boston. Ryan and I dated for nine months before calling it quits and slowly drifting apart.

And when I'm leaving town - probably never to see Ryan again - he blows me off for one last meeting. He couldn’t be bothered to say one last goodbye to someone he claimed to really love and understand. He was one of two men in my life who I ever seriously considered settling down with. I can't believe how totally we both misjudged one another.

When I was packing up my bookshelf, I stared at those binders, the ones full of letters from my boys in Boston. Did I really want to carry around their memories for the rest of my life? Did I want to keep fooling myself into thinking that our friendship really meant anything? In a week where all my real friends surfaced to lend a helping hand or just to talk to me on the phone, Ryan couldn't be assed to meet me for coffee at my request. I had people who were threatening to spend all their money on plane tickets to fly to Boston and help me move heavy furniture. I had friends from High School who I hadn’t heard from in ages suddenly calling to tell me that they believed in me. When things got tough, I couldn't believe how many people suddenly opened their lives to me, and took the time to show me that I was really loved, and loved in the way that counts.

So I took those binders, opened up the rings, and watched those letters as they fell directly into the dumpster behind my apartment building. I'm not taking the letters with me as I move. I had to dig out last year's planner to even find Ryan's phone number in order to call him for drinks in the first place. In a year, we will have lost track of each other so thoroughly that this entry can be considered the last thing I'll ever write concerning Dan and Ryan.

The End.