25 years ago, I was walking around a park with people who back then were near and dear friends. They had carved out time away from their family to do this, mine was an ocean away, as per usual. We had handed in the longest essay we would write. We were bracing ourselves for the longest exams we would ever write, under the most thoroughly cheating proof circumstances we would ever encounter. Not even med school went onto match it. It's something to think back on that program, its requirements, how we rose to meet them...
We barely kept in touch after I was sent off to my overseas punishment.
One would go on to become an ex-gay, then an ex-ex-gay. If you had told me that the only thing harder than remaining friends through his fundamentalist years was maintaining a friendship through his power bottom years, I wouldn't have believed you, but there you go. To be clear, I was supportive/enabling of his sexcapades, but he fell well short of being trans supportive.
One first admitted to liking me romantically. I was kind in my non-reciprocation, but still she planted drugs on me to cross an international border. I came out of it unscathed, but ended our friendship. She went onto move to the same city as I would. We had a few acquaintances in common, but happily, we never crossed paths again. I am told she is ethically dubious-at-beast behaviours in her work with young women, and I believe it.
One went on to become friends with my father. It was weird to know that was going on, that my father was mentoring a friend while ignoring my pleas for any guidance. His career and personal life is the stuff of my dreams. We haven't spoken since my dad died.
One went to Russia, where she first took to communism, then experienced all of the drama, before finally returning back to Canada, a hardened conservative. She reached out to get help from my father, which I declined for pragmatic reasons, and she never spoke to me again.
The other went to live in a conservative part of Europe, and told me in no uncertain terms how transphobic she was.
Life, it's what happens when you're busy trying to do other things.
