Stranger Anxiety

There's no place like weddings for running into old friends and remembering how enjoyable their company is. Apologies for not keeping in touch are accompanied by an unspoken resolve to maintain better communication from now on. And to exercise after New Year's and to stop starting craft projects that I won't finish...


And two years later when I still haven't talked to them, something will inevitably happen to remind me how much I want to be friends with these people. But my desire to call or write to them meets an equal and opposite force of guilt over not having called them all this time. This gives birth to the imaginative and somewhat irrational worry that if I did call I would undoubtedly mention something that was unknowingly insensitive to whatever life-changing or traumatic event has taken place in their life recently that I would have known about had I stayed in closer contact.

So I look both longingly and hesitantly at their names in my phonebook. This is what we call an approach-avoidance conflict. Then I tell myself I'll call them soon, but not today. This is what we call denial. Then I curl up on the floor and suck my thumb. This is what we call nap time.

Consequently, I have taken to seizing opportunities, when I run into old friends, to tell them in no uncertain terms, "I'm horrible at keeping in touch with people. Just know that even if you don't hear from me for seven years, you are always welcome on my phone, in my home, and in my heart." Can't say how effective this approach is. So far the only response I've gotten is "you should embroider that on a pillow."