So I can’t remember the last time I woke up crying and so today when I woke up with a wet face stuck against a damp pillow after a horrid horrid nightmare, I was quite surprised. I had a dream that my childhood best friend was killed during her wedding (by some evil- doer and worse in the ocean) and then once dead was mostly gobbled by a bunch of hungry sharks. Since I chose not to attend the wedding, no one bothered to tell me she died, making me miss her funeral. When I found out of her death, I could not stop cyring until I woke up.

While thankfully none of my childhood friends have had this fate, many of them have tied the knot in the past year and I have missed two of those weddings because of various reasons, mostly having to do with time and money. Clearly missing these events has had more of a profound effect on me than I am willing to admit.

This has been one of the tougher years mostly because of my mom’s illness, leaving me with very little literal and at times emotional time for others. I feel like my friendships have suffered some and often this is because I am not so good at letting others know at the toll, time-wise and emotionally, that this can take on one, especially when finishing your dissertation (which also means you are broke).

So anyway, if I have missed your wedding or keep saying no to your invitations or am not reciprocating like Marcel Mauss tells me I should, well at least I still dream about my friends although I hope that the nightmares end, replaced with dreams of a lighter nature..