(this is annie)

I met a friend after work last night. Or maybe we're not friends, I don't know. We have an odd relationship. We talk maybe once every six weeks, see each other for short bursts of time every couple of months — sometimes just 15 minutes — and that's it. And yet I feel like we know so much about our emotions, which sounds so Mr. Rogers, but it's not corny, promise. Because we don't have many shared experiences, we can be nakedly honest with each other without fear of judgment. It works for me and I think it does for him, too.

We were talking about recent disappointments in our personal lives, and how changing relationships is not necessarily a bad thing. Painful, disappointing, but not bad. It was a satisfyingly mature conversation, the kind I couldn't have understood years ago, and I found my mind rolling around in its nuances back at the apartment. It was a good reminder to be more accepting of myself and of others, to assume no responsibility for someone else's issues, and to be a better communicator. Also, I know the language here makes it sound like we're having sexytimes, but this is not the case. I don't know what happened there, but I'm about to be late to meet a different friend, so I can't pull out my thesaurus to make it less suggestive.