He's still there.

My best friend called, and somehow even everything is a little better. He's still out there. He still reads my emails. He still cares about me. His life is hectic and without a schedule -- both he and his wife are looking for jobs, they are selling the house themselves (are FSBOs ever easy?), preparing to move. Just because he doesn't have the time, or perhaps it would be fairer to say we don't have the synchronicity we once did, to allow him to sit and talk with me for hours on end doesn't mean I don't cross his mind. I still matter.

I trusted him with my secrets and with (a reasonable facsimile of) who I really am. He has seen me more vulnerable than most people have. Partly because he revealed himself to me early on, I believed I could trust him. For a long time, I suspected this friendship was a sturdier lifeline for him than it was for me. I was just beginning to get used to having someone I could lean on. Then one day in April … POOF! Gone. It was cruel, and scary.

And, as he says, "not part of the plan." After all, he was laid off. Sucker punched. It's not like he abandoned me, no matter how much it feels like that. And while I feel a tremendous sense of loss, his whole life changed overnight. I need to remember that.

I have decisions to make. I can't stay at this job. I have to organize my search and get off my butt. I have to get over this feeling of aimlessness and inertia. And I have to do it without the steady hand of my best friend on the small of my back. He has too much on his plate right now to give me as much support as I want.

But he's still there. His new life will take shape, gel, and settle into a routine and he's shown that he will make space for me. And I can get through this.

I still have my friend. We're just different. Our relationship is evolving. But he's still my friend.