What happens when you remove an extrovert from a tight circle of friends?

What happens when the distance between family becomes so great, that the word "family" ceases to be an accurate word to describe a group of people who share a name or blood?

Reviewing my journals from my college days was a sobering reminder of the answers to those questions.

Paradise Lost

I had a really tight group of friends in high school.

My writings during my summer breaks from college in the years following graduation are filled with late night conversations, lounging by the pool, and just plain old fun.

All the golden rays of youth in full bloom shone brightly upon my life. Like an old turntable playing a crisp tune, spinning at a smooth speed.

I still cherish this memory today.

But around the 3 year mark following graduation, the record skips and scratches. The vinyl forever scarred.

New jobs, relationships, living arrangements: in other words, life, with all of its messy complications happened and when the music stopped I was alone.

A Road Full of Dangers

Up to this point in my mapping journey the road has been fairly smooth. Today was the first time the painful echoes of the past reached up and grabbed my in a merciless grip.

As I wrote in the first chapter, this is "ground floor" work. It gets ugly sometimes. Serious deep inner work is rarely easy.

An entry from August 16, 2006 sums up my feelings after a string of disappointing incidents with friends and family in the preceding months and years:

"...maybe I'm more naive than I thought, but if I can't trust my friends here [at college] who else is there? In the end you can truly only rely on yourself, I hate to become cynical because of this one incident but my faith in their loyalty has been deeply shaken."

This is where the fault lines begin to take shape. The beginning of my place of birth's split from its place of importance. The beginning of its glacial drift toward the deep corners of my map never to return to it's initial position.