FLASHBACK #61: JP's Choice

I have hardly heard from my friend JP (read about him here). Since MidSummer 2004, contact had been virtually non-existent existent. I racked my brains, desperately trying to link his behaviour up with something I may have said or done. Nothing came forth.

I spoke to the Swedish Finn, one of JP's friends of many years who I had come to know quite well. He explained that JP was working very hard, carving out a career etc. That doesn't explain away 6 months of silence, does it?

Being the sensitive guy that I am, I took this very personally. The months - and the seasons - passed and we bumped into JP one day while he was walking his dog around Töölönlahti (Töölö Bay). Whilst engaging in small talk with Bree in English, he blatantly ignored me. What a twat, I thought. Two years of what I thought was friendship clearly meant nothing to him.

It was at that moment, however, that I realised that JP's choice to detatch himself was difficult to come back from - he had been spiteful, mean and ignorant, traits not conducive to a meaningful friendship.

It's ironic because on the very day I am writing this Flashback (15th December, 2006), I saw JP in the street. When I say in the street, we actually passed within a metre of eachother in opposite directions; his eye met mine, we recognised one another, but we both kept on walking. As the metres receded, I felt a bitterness stir up inside of me, but then I remembered that this was JP's choice. By now, we had both moved and no doubt changed and I had nothing left to give.