Do I Ever Cross Your Mind?

I love/hate it when Pandora plays a song that simply makes me "think".  Today, that song was Brian McKnight's "Anytime" and it got me to thinking about a friend from high school and how we've lost touch.

"Dan" was my very best friend during high school.  We did everything together and were pretty much together all the time during my junior and senior years, he was a year behind me.  I could tell him everything.  Well, just about everything, I was still about 5 years from coming to terms with being gay.  But Dan and I just understood each other.  We were both "misfits" and socially awkward.

After I graduated and moved on to college, I lost touch with Dan.  I guess it's a natural part of life as this was before Facebook and MySpace.  By the time I realized that I missed our friendship, Dan had moved on to parts unknown.  It killed me that I couldn't tell him how much our friendship meant to me.

About 12 years ago I was able to get in contact with a mutual friend of ours who let me know that Dan had enlisted in the Air Force.  I was kinda shocked because Dan never seemed to be the military type.  I have a relative who was able to locate him and send him an email letting him know that I was looking for him.  I got an email from him in the fall of 2002 and was elated.  Through a few emails we caught up with one another, but I left out the BIG detail of what had gone on in my life.  Knowing the military can monitor emails, I didn't want to put Dan in an awkward position of finding out that I was gay via email.

I decided to write Dan a letter to come out to him.  I mailed it off with the best of hopes.  I waited and waited, but never got a direct response to the letter.  I did get one more email from Dan, but it was very generic.  I haven't received any correspondence from him since.  Not to say that I haven't tried to communicate with him.  Through the miracle of the internet (I google his name every once in a while to see if there's anything new, and he's not on facebook), I've been able to follow Dan's career and mailed him a letter last year, along with a card this year to congratulate him on a promotion.  I don't want to give the impression of "stalking", just every once in a while I get curious of how he's doing.

I've included my email in the letters, hoping that I would at least get a note on how he is doing.  But alas, nothing has been sent.  I just want to let him know that the line of communication is open should he ever want to contact me.

I have to admit, I've thought that Dan might be a "family" member like me, but I've never asked him about it.  Because of his military duties and "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", I always thought if he was it might put his job in jeopardy.  Honestly I don't care one way or the other, I just miss my friend.