The Occasional Solipsist

So who out there likes paying somebody else's mortgage? Hmm, nobody eh? Well, me neither. And if I was a god-thanking man (which if you know me at all, you know I'm not) I'd be thanking him (or is that Him - haha) that I no longer have to pay rent anymore. For the second time.

Superwife and I recently bought the house we've been renting for the last year, shitty narrow driveway and all. We are getting some renovations done right now (well not right now, it is Sunday night, but you know what I mean), so the house is a fucking nightmare. I can't believe that my wife is keeping her shit together, what with her compulsion to rid the house of dirt and dust at every opportunity. Its kind of funny when you can walk around the house and see where your animals have been by the drywall dust tracks they've left behind. Anywho the house is cool, we got a good deal, etc, etc. But the best part is that I didn't have to lift one fucking box to move. Loved that part the most.

I've been feeling nostalgic about friends lately. Not sure if its because I really don't have any chums here, even after being in St. Catharines for over 2 years, but I think that might have something to do with it. I've made a good friend in this guy I worked at a search engine company with, but other than hanging out with him, my wife, my sister, my animals, I end up spending a lot of time by myself. Superwife is a good sport but she usually can't stay up past 10:00, and I'm a night owl, so there we are. So I find myself thinking about some of the friendships I've had over the years a fair bit. Not that I feel sorry for myself, just that I've been thinking about the way things used to be more often than usual for me lately. Probably just like everyone else, but like I just said, I have no one to share this with. haha. I think about my buddy Jon a lot. I don't think I've talked about him yet. Even after three+ years I still don't like to talk about it. I think its because I feel like my friendship with him was too special for anybody else to deserve sharing in it. What an asshole I am eh? Anyway here's a little backstory:

I met Jonathon Cooley (to be Jon or Cooley, here-and-everafter) at the beginning of high school and we clicked right away. Jon had this great talent for connecting with just about everybody, so I'm not the only one who can tell this story. But this is my blog, so I'm telling it.

Anyway, he and I spent a lot of time together over our high school years and beyond. I have some seriously great stories (many of them drug related, but whaddaya want? It was high school) but I'll save them for another day. The bottom line is, he was the best friend I have ever had, and he was the person who knew me better than anyone else ever has, before or since. I'd like to think that he would say the same about me if I was the one who had fallen, but the shitty thing is I don't think I was as good a friend to him as he was to me. Sucks, but there it is.

See, the thing with me is I distance myself from most people, particularly those who try to become close to me. Its probably a little bit of personal insecurity, probably a little bit of holdover from some crummy familial relationships when I was younger (that still continue, unfortunately), but mostly its because I'm a lazy friend. I get so caught up in my own shit that a lot of times I don't take the time to send an email, pick up the phone, or go for a visit. Take Jon for example. Once he moved away to Peterborough to go to university, this guy would call me pretty much every time he'd come into town. I don't want to be too hard on myself, because most times he'd call we'd get together, but now that he's gone it's all the opportunities that I missed that I find myself thinking about. I think about how he and I never got around to having that golf lesson he was going to give me. Or how I never got the chance to go stay with him at Trent like he'd asked me to so often. Or how, son of a bitch that I am, I couldn't think of his feelings over mine long enough to visit my best friend in the hospital when his cancer came back.

I guess I'll always be grateful to Dave Cooley (another great guy) for calling me to visit Jon at the end of his life. I never told Jon where I had been the day that I went to visit him; instead I just ended up holding his hand and talking to him about some of our exploits, thinking there would be time to surprise him later. I guess I've never told anyone this, but I was working on Lake Temagami that summer, and I boated by Jon's family's cottage. I had a camera with me, so I took some pictures to bring to him, hoping to surprise Jon with the pictures sometime. I never had the chance to develop those pics though. Because Jon was dead the next morning. I never did develop that film.

I miss Jon an awful lot. I think that it really sucks that it took me losing my best friend to realize that I could have been a much better one. And I guess the part that bugs me most is that I don't get the chance to tell him that I'm sorry.

So that's where I end up when I think about the friendships that I've had over the course of my life. I have had some great friends, notably Jeff, who was the first friend I made after moving to Callander after grade 4. Steve, Jason, Sheldon, Bundy, Taylor, McIntyre, Conlan, Sandy, Willy, many others. I've had lots of friends. And Jon isn't the only (or first) friend I've lost. My friend Greg Birch died a few years ahead of Jon. But because of the place I hold for him inside of me I kinda hit a wall at Jon and don't get the chance to think much about anyone else.

I'm pretty sure that some of the guys I used to know would be happy to chat me up on the phone or whatever, but then I think that maybe I've left it too long. I sent out an email to a bunch of them a few days ago, one of those stupid Q&A things, like 'What's your favourite time of year?' Whatever. An ugly olive branch is still an olive branch. I got a few responses which was nice. But I think that I am going to make a concerted effort to keep in touch more with the people that I was once close to. I have learned that the biggest regret is to do nothing. Because when you're alone late at night, you have plenty of time to look back along the path of your life and examine the choices you've made along the way.

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