Bridges

I burn more bridges than I build. Like that DeLorean, a trail of flames often follows me. Unlike that DeLorean, I can't travel backwards in time to make amends.

Last night, at the death of Chubb and Steve's party, I answered the door, and found myself looking at to a once-familiar face. Suze. My old flatmate Paul's old girlfriend. Things hadn't ended nicely - things rarely do, I've found - and I hadn't spoken to her for years. Two years. The last time I saw her was, I think, in Starbucks on Oxford Road. I smiled at her, "Come in!"

There was a time when I saw Suze every day. She was a regular feature of the house on Parsonage Road as things there drew to an end, and the flat by the Bridge Club when things there started out. And then, when things with her and Paul drew to an end, I became increasingly hostile to her. She was, I thought then, treating him badly.

A lot has changed since then. Assuming good faith has helped me handle behaviour I don't fully understand in a more balanced and even way. But somehow Suze had slipped through the net of my zen. Somehow my stubbornness, my affinity for grudge-holding, meant she was stilled filed under *shit* in my mind. My fault.

It was nice to see her. I gave a shit about what she was up to, what she had to say. I tried to show her that I was past all that guff. I don't know what she thought about it.

I burn more briges than I build. But I tried to build last night. I tried.