For all of you who've known me long enough you will remember my friend and crush Heather from nearly 4 years ago now.  The strangest thing happened last night.  I drove her home from a party we were both at and we started talking about how we've been and she told me how much she missed my friendship.  Again those of you who know me will probably remember how we parted ways and how the lines of communication were basically cut from my side and left that way until I felt a need to re open them.  So instead of dropping her off we found a place to just sit and talk for a long while and even though we haven't really spoken for four years she was very open with me.  We talked about our families and how we've changed since we last really spoke to each other, but she kept repeating to me that she missed our friendship a lot and that she felt nobody could relate to her now like I did back then.  It's surprising because she's always been a girl who has a lot of guy friends, and I never really considered myself anything special to her, and I very well might not be, but I'll take it at face value.  This has really turned my mind around to think about my whole ordeal with this break up and what friendship really means to some people.  Katey had said to me that I might not value friends as much as some people do, and I think to a point she was correct.  I never miss friends that much, and I'm not particularly saddened if we lose touch over a long period, I just sort of feel numb and when we see each other again we'll be great friends but then if we lose touch again I'm not deeply saddened by it.

Hearing Heather say she missed our friendship after 4 years makes me wonder what kind of impact I have on the girls that I get close to.  Maybe it's a girl thing, I can't really see my guy friends "missing" me that much after all.  But in a person who's moved on, travelled, and met tons of people, why is there still a sense of regret at the way things happened?  The ironic thing is that Katey said losing my friendship was like breaking up all over again.  Heather said some really nice things to me about who I am and the way I can listen to people and relate to them, and now that I think of it I believe her.  I've always been there to comfort people and help them achieve their goals, and it really does feel rotten right now to have to lean on others to get me through this, but I realize that's what friends are for and I'm still very grateful for them.  This all goes back to the friendship issue with Katey though, I'm not in a state of mind to be friends with her right now because it's just too painful.  Past history for me has always been avoidance and then in a few years time when I've gotten over all the feelings then maybe a friendship is possible, but so far it hasn't been with anyone I used to like more than a friend.  I felt the numbness again last night, and even as heather was telling me all these things about me I couldn't really repeat it back to her as I just don't feel the closeness with her that I used to.  I felt like I was talking to someone I know I had been friends with in the past and had had strong feelings for, but I couldn't feel anything of the friendship we used to have, and it was more like I was just talking to a stranger who I was logically connected to but not emotionally.  But yet after 4 years she was comfortable enough to be telling me her uncertainties and showing the kind of emotion you would only show to your closest friends.  Even though I don't see a future with me and Katey anymore, I can't help but feel sad that this will be what we are years from now.  In all honesty at this point I don't even know if there will be a moment like this as I've been working so hard the last month to put the past behind me.

Right now I feel like my heart's had a barrier put up around it, like I want to give it out again but I know deep in my mind that the next time I do it will be very guarded and not easily done.  I'm a very open person but at this point it feels like that trust that I gave Katey so easily will be very hard to give away again.  It's not my nature to be like this, so I find myself very conflicted and I don't really know what to expect for the next relationship.

Point is at the end of last night it felt nice to know that people don't forget you that easily, and that I do have an impact on them, as much as I think that I'm just a ghost that floats around sometimes.  But can I honestly say I miss the friendship?  In my heart I don't think I do, and whether it's time or because I've changed I don't know but I really don't.  So if that is what happens with me and Katey then 4 years from now I guess I could be sitting here thinking the same thing, even though right now I miss her more than anything else.

I ended up going to the mall yesterday because my friend and I were busy until then.  Anybody who has gone shopping with me knows that I don't buy things on a whim, I research the crap out of it and try and find the best deal on it after.  We ended up being there for 4 hours and it was actually a lot of fun, albeit tiring.  My friend was extremely patient with me and she's probably more knowledgable about clothes than anyone I've been shopping with, so she got me to try on all these things that I would never have tried on had I been by myself.  We went to the expensive stores as well as the cheap stores looking for a jacket, but at one point we found a $500 jacket that was sort of what I was looking for.  We laughed when we saw the price tag but I tried it on anyway just for fun.  When I put it on and looked at myself in the mirror...it looked like I was even more slender than I am already.  I thought it looked very odd because there's no way I'm that skinny...so I thought it was just the jacket and tried on another one.  Same thing, and at this point I asked my friend and she said that I looked unusually skinny in that mirror, so she stepped in front of it and she saw herself and said that there was no way she was that thin either, it must be a skinny mirror, and we had another good laugh at that thinking how fitting it was for the store to have a mirror that makes you look more slim than you actually are.  In another store we found a $300 jacket...but it was totally rad, it looked like it was straight out of the Matrix.  This became known as the Neo jacket, I wanted to get it...but couldn't justify the price for how thin the jacket was.  After 2 hours or so I finally got a jacket I wanted, and it was from the last store that we went to, but luckily for me she noticed the stitching on the back was sort of messed up, so she convinced the cashier to give me a 20% discount since it looked wrong.  I was really pleased with that, but I'll probably have to spend half of the money I saved to take it to a tailor to get it fixed.

We spent the rest of the time at the mall looking at other things, and I don't think i've tried on that many clothes before.  She pretty much made me try on anything I was thinking of buying...which was interesting cause I never try things on before buying them.  I think she had as much fun making me her personal mannequin as I did running around to every store to find the best deals.  If I learned anything yesterday its that medium isn't always the best size :P

Anyways I'm really grateful that she's been taking the time to keep me company right now and talk to me when I feel lonely.  We weren't really that good of friends before as I didn't really make an effort to get to know her better even though we went to high school together, but now that we're closer friends I'm really glad that I know her.  She's really been amazing for me through the Christmas break and someday I hope I can return the favor for her.  It was a really good day today, we had another late night text message conversation after we got home from the bar and she said we'd have to go back for the Neo jacket when the spring sales are on.  Oh the Neo jacket...

We went to a family friend's tonight for hotpot.  They had a wii so after dinner we played it with their son.  He's 10 years old I think and it's his first year of school here, his dad has been working here in Edmonton for about 6 years now, and his mom flies back and forth between China and here every few months, but they decided they want a Canadian education for him.  Anyways, point is, he tooled me in boxing.  It was my first time playing the wii but it wasn't even close, I don't know how he did it.  After a while my dad wanted to try the wii golf.  What a disaster, it took him over 5 minutes to learn how to hit the ball, it was too funny listening to everyone trying to explain the controls to him and having to get his friend to show him multiple times.  After that though their son was getting bored watching so his mom went to play a board game with him, and I got curious and decided to go with them.  I ended up playing 2 rounds of the board game with him, getting horribly beaten both times, but I actually had a lot of fun playing with him.  I'd forgotten how much I like spending time with kids and how amusing it is for me to watch them.  They laugh at everything you say and its so easy to entertain them.  When I was playing with him he had all these sly tricks to try and sway the dice in his favor, but I caught on to them after a while and imitated him which made him laugh.  I even caught him trying to sneak in an extra dice when I wasn't looking.

I'm going to the mall with my friend tomorrow or thursday to do my boxing day shopping...a week late.  I was on the fence about going on actual boxing day but I didn't really have the motivation at the time and I couldn't find anyone brave enough to go with me, but it turned out that she went on her own on boxing day.  If only I had known...then I would have been set.  But in any case, I'm excited because I didn't do much on boxing day this year, as opposed to my wild boxing days in the past, and it'll be nice to have some company for once as I'm usually a lone wolf when it comes to that sort of thing.  I have lotsa things I wanna get and the Christmas money is asking to be spent.

Wargh it's 4 am, time for beddo.  I have this habit now of taking my phone and leaving it beside my bed now because I have these late night text messaging sessions with my friend.  It's funny because when I first got my cell phone I thought text messaging was the most useless thing ever, why text someone when you can talk to them?  Well...now my phone bill is mostly text messages.  You win Telus.