While at book club, family dinner, and karaoke last night, I kept thinking about where I wasn't.  I was having a good day, but there was a place I might otherwise have been, and it was on my mind.

In high school, I had two best friends.  The three of us always thought A. would be married first.  Turned out E. did, and then W., which would be me.  Last night was A.'s wedding reception.

So much has happened among the three of us.  It is so hard when people who seemed so alike - or at least compatible - at sixteen turn out to be incredibly different people with wildly divergent plans and un-plans.  The bond created during the crises of high school can break.  Or just stretch.  Or stretch and rebound, like bungee cord, causing alternating distress and joy, which is what I am most familiar with, I guess.

But last night was A.'s party, and I wasn't there.  Who was there?  Well, Dave.  And A.'s family.  And probably some random high school friends.  Things just didn't work out for me to be there.  I have to be in Boston next weekend.  Two weekends in a row wouldn't work financially, and my staying out of Toronto for a week right now isn't a good plan.

But yesterday, even though I was having fun, with Joey, and lots of great people, and babies, and even dogs, I felt like I was supposed to be someplace else.

I've made a lot of effort recently to stop being bogged down in missing Boston, and quitting my Cambridge-based job did help a lot with that.  But it continues to come and go; I try to keep in touch with my friends from the States, and it just makes being here harder.  I try to be more involved here, and I fail at my longer-term friendships.

It's frustrating.

But it's going to go how it's going to go, and I'll probably stretch further away, because now I have this fledgling new life, and it might have to be up to some of the people around me to fly rapidly through the air in my direction.  Smack.