Letters of Love

I think i had forgotten what my blog was for.
Tonight i remembered that it was originally about saying those things that, for whatever reason, i was not able to say in person.
So here goes; this story goes way back, before any of this blogging business, before finding myself working in an office. I'm pretty sure it was 2003.
A friend had asked me to photograph her wedding (this is always tricky- not quite a guest and not quite a professional).
This is what i want to say to you, to explain, to make clear after all the crazy things i may have said that i did not mean. This is how it happened. This is how i feel.

PART ONE

I hadn't really thought about whether you would be there or not. I was too busy with the technicalities of the event and the two positions i would be occupying at once during the weekend. But when you weren't there, i felt your absence in a way that was an absolute revelation to me. Ten years since we met, i did not believe myself to have any attachment to you aside from that history that you have with those people with whom you spend time with in the period before you have any responsibilities to houses or loved ones or children.
But when you weren't there, i felt it. It was the first time it had ever occurred to me, that although the people surrounding me at this wedding were now my friends also, i wouldn't know any of them if it weren't for you. I found myself wondering what i was doing here when you weren't.
I found myself talking about you to one of your friends. We talked about you in glowing terms. All the wonderful things about you suddenly seemed so clear and so present and so missed. I had always taken for granted the way that you took me into your circle of friends and asked for nothing in return. You could not have known at the time, but that was exactly what i needed at that time in my life- to be part of a family that was not my own, to not be in the place that i was when you met me, and to not be alone, to be safe in the crowd.
You did not do this knowingly i'm sure. It was just a by-product of the way you do things, of the way you move through your life.
I saw you shortly after the wedding and found myself (uncharacteristically) telling you that we had all missed you. This was the closest i could get at the time to the truth, which was that i had missed you, after ten years, for the very first time.