Good-bye Rust Friend

We've been friends for forever. But is that reason enough to keep her around for the future?

Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project  has blogged about the different type of friends we collect throughout the chapters of our lives. 

She got me thinking about one of my oldest. Ms. Rubin describes her this way:

Rust friend: a person you’ve known for a long, long time; you’re probably not going to get any closer to that person, unless something changes, but is a part of your life.

~Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project

I ponder this as I think about my Rust friend and me … .We had a teenage crush... heartthrob, rock’n roll folk idol Cat Stevens. 
He sang…

 

And though you want them to last forever

You know they never will

(you know they never will)

And the patches make the goodbye harder still.

And it is so…..my Rust Friend. 
It is time for us
to say good-bye.

I know she would agree. We have nothing left in common. The forks in our road have split along different paths. 
We have different priorities. 
Our values are incompatible. 
But deep down
she does not care about who I am. 
She does not ask “How are things? What’s new in school? How are you doing?”

It’s all sadly superficial now; I ask the artificial questions and don't much care about her reply. 
I wear my heart on my sleeve and my face gives me away. 
I cannot hide being disinterested dissatisfied disconnected.

But yet of any of this we do not speak.

We share a history. Almost 40 years.

Yeow. That’s a lifetime.

But a shared history alone does not sustain friendship.

And so, I must say farewell, my Rust Friend.

Although the goodbye is harder still,

We’re only dancing on this earth for a short while.

~Cat Stevens, Oh Very Young