For some reason, I've been feeling reflective lately. So let's talk about burning bridges.
When I was younger - yes, before anyone says it, so much younger than today - I burnt bridges with people over the slightest provocation, with distinct, lasting intent. Now that the first - and possibly second and third, frankly - flushes of youth, I look back and I see all these bridges, in their various stages of crispiness, and well... It makes me think.
Most obvious are the - and we'll be speaking metaphorically from hereon in, fact fans, because much as we all like fire, I'm not an arsonist - burnt stubs and stumps where bridges used to be. They stopped smoking a long time ago, and now the river passes under them, free and clear of anyone trying to cross. These are, paradoxically, the easiest to deal with, because outside of some miraculous Group Therapy session, they're never going to be rebuilt, and often for good reason.
Next are the bridges that are still smoking, and that have structural problems and integrity issues which render them uncrossable. These are slightly more problematic because, in theory, they could be repaired, given enough time and effort, but in the majority of cases what's on the other side isn't worth the time or, frankly, the effort. They stand as a testimony to those times when I thought it was best to simply cut contact with someone and just leave it at that, in the hope that the friendship would atrophy and wither away peacefully.
Sidebar; sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't. In a couple of cases there was a period of six months to a year where the other party, not understanding my whys or wherefores, tried to mend their side of the bridge, but always attempted to do so by imposing what they wanted onto the situation and expecting me to just adapt, compromise, and roll with the - again, metaphorical - punches. Which falls, psychologically, for me in the realm of things I don't work well with - adaptation, yes, being told what to do, not so much. After a year or so in both major cases, both parties gave up, and while my side of the bridge still occasionally smokes, theirs has given in to nature and mouldered or rotted away. Which is paradoxically for the best.
Worst are the third class of bridges; those made of charcoal, either wholly or at least in places. These are the ones that haven't been definitively burnt, but that I've managed, through stupidity or lack of foresight or any number of youthful indiscretions, to set little fires to without burning them. The contact is still there, the friendship is still there, but oftentimes it's as bitter as charcoal, and to cross the bridge is to risk breaking more and more off of it for less and less prospective return. Some of these bridges I've repaired, and made them travel-safe once more. Some of them still smolder. Some of them can't be fixed, and to cross them once more might mean breaking them. If you like, these are the break in case of emergency bridges; cross them at your peril, and only if the reward outweighs the risk.
Next to these are the bridges lost to natural wasteage; contacts not renewed, people forgotten, or else friends on a popular social networking site that are just that, electronic links with nothing behind them but some vague memories of oh yeah that time three-four-five-six years ago when that thing happened that we all laughed about. These are bridges covered in moss and wreathed in fog, and, again, cross them at your peril, because a refusal often disappoints.
On my own little island - although of course no man is an island, but let's move on before the jokes start - there are as many bridges as there are people who were more than a passing aquaintances.
The ones I am grateful for, and that are in short supply, are the well-maintained, waxed-and-polished renewable oak bridges of the social world, trodden regularly and maintained as necessary. These are, to repeat the point, in truly short supply, because that's how I've let them get over the years. One or two of them are even more or less fireproof, but none of them survive without maintenance of one kind or another.
If this seems (a) unduly serious and (b) not that much to do with studying, bear this in mind; something the older and arguably more mature like to say is that the friends you make at university are with you for life. That does make it sound more like a sentence than a promise, but I'm here to say that it is, like all truisms, not necessarily true. I have two people from the first time on the merry-go-round who I still count as good, close friends, who have the best-maintained bridge in the metaphorical country and a further two who I could count on as good friends even though I'm not sure they think I've actually changed on any significant personal level for over a decade.
(Well, hey, maybe I haven't.)
That's it. Out of the hundreds - maybe thousands - of people met on the merry-go-round, two are perfect friends, two are good friends, and there are maybe another twenty to thirty I could rustle up as friends-at-a-distance.
On the flip side of the coin, there are exes, people who I done wronged, people who just think - or, more accurately, thought - of me as a playful, woeful fool, self-centred and self-aggrandising, because, hey, I was.
So I see the people on the merry-go-round at the moment, and I think; in ten years time, maybe one in twenty of you will remember my name, or my face, if I'm not careful enough in harvesting the growing trees of these friendships to make the bridges strong enough to last.
One thing that's useful, though, is that the class sizes for this are about two to three times smaller than last time, though, so for better or worse we're one unhappy, extended
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