Manic Monday, hosted by RicoChey!

[ricochey]

Happy Monday, Flames. The final topic of February is up, and it’ll get your heart going. Need help finding the words? Try a workshop.

In keeping with the theme of short fiction, let’s have some short non-fiction: I have this friend, and though I’ve known her since we were in grade school, we stopped talking for several years right toward the end of high school. We split, led two completely different lives, and somehow crashed back into each other last year. Now, barely a year after reuniting, her husband (also an old friend) has moved to Washington to start a new life for them and she plans to follow him some time in the next year.

I know exactly how difficult it’s going to be for her, missing her husband and eventually having to start a whole new life. I’m pretty much an expert on missing your significant other, and I’ve hauled off and started over twice so far. What’s new for me this time is being the one watching someone else move on and go away. Typically, it’s me doing the leaving. Now I’m not so sure I wasn’t too harsh when I told my friends, “You’ll be fine. I’m just moving, not dying.”

Of course I plan to be supportive, but I’m prepared to take it as a personal affront. I’M supposed to be the one who leaves and gets missed, not the other way around. How am I supposed to process this? Guess I’ll just have to, I dunno, grow or something.

Have you ever had the tables turned on you, quite unexpectedly? How did you deal? Do you think you could have been more graceful?