Time And Experience

I was just browsing many of my older entries, stuff that I had written some 14 or 15 years ago.  I just got back onto Open Diary and I genuinely hadn’t remembered much of what I had written years ago.  I don’t think that my writing has changed that much through the years, but one thing I happened to note was that I wrote about my friend, Carmen, way too much.  Reading many of those entries was frustrating, though at the time everything I wrote about was actually happening, I don’t think I was as frustrated.  But reading about it all these years later proved to be quite the exhausting endeavor.

I know that Carmen definitely was a huge part of my work life, but in thinking about it now, that was several, several years ago.  We have since grown apart, maybe just a little, but I also think that we’ve come a long way to where I want to say that maybe we understand each other a little more.  I don’t hold any grudges or maintain any ill will towards her.  I guess with the way that I thought, felt, and wrote about her all those years ago, I really give the impression that my days and world truly evolved around her.  Today, in 2023, I am definitely not that person anymore.  I suppose through the years, I had to change and maybe grow up a bit.  Time and experience will do that to a person.

Carmen is a good person.  That hasn’t changed.  At least, I want to think that that hasn’t changed.  I’ve grown up and maybe I see her differently now.  I think that I can still talk to her like I always had and maybe, in my mind, we won’t skip a beat.  These last four-plus years are the longest that we have been apart and perhaps, it was for the best.  It allowed me to branch out, meet and connect with other people, and establish relationships with other people.  Maybe, even had she stayed in the same office, we would have split up and stopped hanging out, just through the natural progression of time.  Then again, maybe nothing would have changed and Christina, Jackie, and now Serena would have never happened.

Again, I’m back to playing the “What if” game.  I don’t know where Thursday’s lunch with Carmen is going to go, but I’m hoping that we’ll come together as older adults and have an excellent conversation, one where we’ll reminisce, reflect on our life changes, and just take the time to catch up.

Also, I think I mentioned in a previous entry that I still haven’t figured out how to tell Carmen that I don’t eat anymore.  Allow me to clarify this, because yes, I still eat.  I just eat a lot differently than I used to.  I’ve been on the diabetes medication, Ozempic, since August 2022.  This medication effectively kills my appetite and makes me not want to eat…ever.  At least for breakfast and lunch, I am seldom hungry, and I have to force himself to eat or risk starving later.  Dinner usually goes down well and I’m hungry at that time, but that’s at night when the day is coming to an end.  This medication also slows down my digestion, so whatever I do eat takes forever to process.  I am also susceptible to recurring bouts of nausea, which I seem to welcome and enjoy.  If anything, I use it as a reminder that I probably shouldn’t be thinking about food.  I guess some fat people behaviors take a bit longer to die.