Mixed Emotions

A friend of mine dropped some news on me via email last week that was unexpected and also, in a small and secret way, a disappointment.

This is one of the few people in my life who gets an almost immediate response whenever he emails, but I couldn't think of anything I wanted to say after reading what he'd written. Instead, I took all of our correspondence from the last few months and put it in a folder so I wouldn't see his name pop up every day when I checked my email. I wanted to mull things over on my own schedule, once whatever I was feeling settled into something more normal, before I wrote him back. (I'll admit I half-considered just ignoring the email altogether and starting fresh on a different tangent in a few weeks, hoping he wouldn't notice.)

Instead, he wrote me today - which was also a bit unexpected, seeing as how I am usually the one to initiate our contact when I start to miss him - asking what had made me speechless. I wasn't sure how to respond, so I simply said I was giving myself some time to process, which is true.

I guess I'm just feeling a little confused and uncertain about exactly why we're writing to each other at all, and why this person from my past knows so much more about me than I do about him, and why it matters to me at all.

I'm thinking I still need more time to figure this all out. *sigh*