Having a Moment

Had a rough moment a couple of nights ago. I believe I've mentioned before that two of our married-couple friends (that is to say, two couples) have abruptly moved out of town. The first couple moved away about a month ago, just before the start of school; the second couple finally managed to sell their house, so they finished packing and departed this weekend, while we were away visiting Firstborn for Parent's Weekend at his college. 

I found myself awake in the middle of the night, feeling sad. Those two couples were largely responsible for me having any kind of in-person social life these past few years. Three of of them were my camping buddies, and as much as I love the state park where we used to go, the thought of camping there without them is almost as depressing as the thought of never camping there again. 

And I don't know why that was suddenly hitting me that hard, right then, though I suspect there were some extenuating circumstances: the trip up for parent's weekend, and the afternoon we spent at the renaissance faire. The trip up was always going to involve some complications, and I knew that going in, so I was coming into it with this weird combination of anticipation and resignation. We're staying in a hotel, and I didn't bring the CPAP machine -- which is okay, but not ideal. I can sleep without it, I just don't sleep as well and I need to keep my head tilted in a way that hotel pillows don't always want to cooperate with. My father -- Firstborn's grandfather -- and his wife wanted to come up as well, which meant bringing her brother along. (Her brother is living with them owing to a pretty comprehensive lack of any other options.) So that meant trying to coordinate with them (best case) and trying to wrangle them so everybody got where they needed to be (much more often the case). 

Beautiful Wife had spotted an advertisement for a local renaissance festival, and we decided to eschew the on-campus activities on Sunday and go try it out. This turned out to be a great decision, in that the event was quite a lot of fun despite being in its first year and still getting its feet under it. That did mean getting a bit more sun than I'm used to, though, which frequently knocks me for a loop. And, of course, before we left for the faire we took the time to figure out why Firstborn's car refused to start. 

Turned out the battery was dead, so completely dead that it wouldn't even unlock the doors when we hit the key fob. We were able to jump it, so it wasn't a completely loss, and I moved the car around to a spot where we'd be better able to park beside it if we needed to jump it again. Which seemed likely, seeing as I was unable to get it to start a second time. So we got back from the renfaire and dropped Firstborn off at his dorm (he had homework to finish for Monday), and then had dinner and went back to the hotel room to collapse... but, y'know, with the awareness that we were still going to have to deal with the car before we could head out in the morning. And honestly, a really happy afternoon with a lot of stimulating new things to see? It leaves a kind of emotional hangover.

All of which doubtless fed into me waking up at one in the morning, finishing a very good book, and then finding myself profoundly depressed and thinking about absent friends.

In the course of writing this out -- because that helps, strangely; I've always used writing to process things -- I keep reminding myself that it's not like they're lost forever. We're still gaming together online, fer Chrissakes. We can still go camping together, if I can quit burning through my vacation as fast I earn it at work and actually build up some time. It's not like we've lost touch and we're never going to see each other again. 

But damn it, I liked having them in town. I liked getting invited to go see a horror movie, or to come over for swimming and a cookout. I liked being able to just drive up for a weekend around the campfire. I liked playing D&D together in person. So no, it's not the end of the world; but yes, I do get to mourn this.