Fracture
(Bob Marley - Turn Your Lights Down Low)

So I'm back from Jamaica. I haven't had a chance to gather the pictures and put together any fancy slideshows yet but I will tell you that I did have a good time, for the most part. I did have a sad moment on the last day of the trip that sort of bummed me out. While the gang went to the beach for the last time to frolic in the water, I decided to lay under the big Jamaican apple tree and read in the hammock. While reading Coupland's latest book The Gum Thief, I came across a passage where one of the main characters expressed his belief that at a certain age, people no longer wanted to be themselves. They wanted to escape and be anyone else but themselves. It's a common daydream of a lot of people; myself included. But this topic just reminded me of how lately I've felt like I've lost touch with a lot of my close friends. That somehow, the person that I am, or have become, isn't in line with the people they've become.

As we get older, it seems to me that the large diverse group of friends start to fracture into smaller collectives. Each collective having a solid base of commonalities. Whether they've recently started a family and share experiences in raising newly born kids, are going through new home ownership and renovation projects, or if they're still single and fighting off the waves of peer pressure to settle down -- there is some sort of common ground. As I look at some of these collectives, I can't say I feel like I fit in anywhere.

It's a lonely feeling.

I feel like I'm constantly trying to keep these friendships alive. Trying to keep the larger diverse group from diverging. As a larger group, I can relate to everyone. As more succinct entities, I seem out of place.

The irony is, the more I think about it, the more apparent it becomes that my constant need to organize group events for my friends is to stave off my own insecurities of slowly fading away from these peoples lives. And yet in the end, this group trip to Jamaica did nothing but remind me of this.

I sometimes wonder if I stopped caring, if all the friendships I've worked to maintain over the years would just wither up and fade away.