i came across this realization over the past weekend that at any given time, you can always tell which friends are built to last in your life. for me, it has never been difficult to point out who my best friends are – even if they come and go over something silly (and the true ones always return) – because of their character, their heart and essentially, their love for me equating my love for them in return, because friendship is, as we all know, a two-way street.

but the ability to identify or categorize doesn’t make the “weeding out” of friends easy, even when it requires nothing more than slowly losing contact, allowing major events to pass by without calling that person, until it finally finishes fizzling. i hate losing people, especially people i have extensive memories with, memories that reflect in my mind when hearing an old song on the radio, or visiting an old neighborhood. i have shed so many of these skins in my lifetime, that i wonder how many skins i have left to lose until there are no more? for how many of these casualties am i to blame myself?

a friend of mine (one of those lifelong ones) described losing a friend for no good reason as a sort of grieving process, and this is what i feel today. i can’t cling to someone when the natural ebb and flow of life sweeps them away and out of grasp, yet i can’t unclench my fists either. there is a time for them to enter, an open window, and eventually they slip underneath the door, naturally, long before the loss is counted.

even with my lifelong friend sleeping next to me every night, offering comfort whenever i ask and sometimes when i don’t, i still cannot release this temporary grieving for each valuable and irreplaceable person. it’s like the grieving is bigger than the friends even were, so powerful in this moment, such a harsh reminder of life’s speed and morphing shape. yes, i am shedding skins again.