Dear Journal: Addresses

Dear Journal,

I have an actual address book. It’s black, and leather, and I’ve had it for probably about 12 years now. The problem is that hardly any of the addresses in it are accurate. In fact, two of the people in it have passed on, and several of the others are names I don’t even recall. Maybe if it had faces to go with the names and addresses, but it doesn’t. It’s old school, and I’m thinking of getting rid of it, but for some reason that makes me sad.

Maybe this is an opportunity to reconnect with some people, if I can, so I’ll have updated information. Or perhaps it’s really a cleansing of sorts because perhaps I was meant to lose touch with those people. Sometimes I think that most of them were only in my life for a time and now that time has passed, so why revisit it? And I guess the only answer I have is that maybe I pulled this address book out from the cobwebs for a reason. Maybe someone in that book needs an echo from their past to help solidify their present.

Or maybe it’s just me who needs it, who needs a reason to feel missed, who needs to rekindle a connection because I don’t know why it ended in the first place. In my mad search for answers I’ve hit something of a dead end with this book because it was so long ago and so far away, and the people in it as distant as dots on the pavement. Their names read like a hazy remembrance that doesn’t quite mesh, and I haven’t made up my mind yet whether or not I’ll use this new technology to try and reconnect or if I’ll just throw the whole address book in the trash and with it the questions it poses.

Sam