Revelation

I've had a revelation.

It came in the form of a dream. A dream about gifts. Gifts wrapped in pretty paper. It was almost like Christmas -- except that I got gifts. Many, many gifts. Gifts from everyone -- large ones and small ones. Tons of gifts. One of my guy friends was there. He gave me a letter -- a letter from him to me -- which I added to the pile of gifts. It was a gift as well. I was lying on a couch reading one of my textbooks and he came to me. He picked up my hand, squeezed it with a gentle pressure and turned and walked out of my life forever. I went on with my day as if everything was the same as it had always been. I left the place I had been and took a bus somewhere else -- but in my haste to exit the bus when I had reached my destination, I forgot my gifts. I forgot the letter. I never saw them again.

The dream haunted me.

The gifts meant absolutely nothing to me. I didn't care that I lost them. The only thing that mattered was the touch. It was as if that touch allowed me to keep going even though I had lost a dear friend. It sustained me. It wasn't that I was hungry for physical touch. Something in the relationship changed me -- it touched me. The physical touch represented the ways that my friend had touched my life. I was never the same again.

The true gift in friendship is that even though our friends will eventually walk out of our lives for one reason or another, those friends will always leave something that we will always cherish and we will never, ever forget.
~MJ