How to worry about a friend who has changed: I want my friend back.

For five days, I went on a road trip with one of my best friends who lives halfway across the country. We hadn't had talks like this for years, if not forever. In fact, I wonder if he knows I regard him as one of my best friends, but I think he does.


He has gone from a friend who BELIEVES in love and in life to a friend who isn't sure what he believes in anymore.  This made me want to stop the car, turn to him, give him a huge hug, and erase the pain away from his memory with a cool rag.  How dare someone (even if that someone is just reflective thought) corrupt someone who used to be so firm in his belief in love, relationships, kindness, and the goodness of others and life itself.  Life can be dark.  Life can be a bastard.  But don't get one of my friends like him.  Not him.


On the other hand, I can't stand that I was that upset.  Just as he and I discussed, he can't be swayed from these thoughts from a time like this.  He can't be told to snap out of it.  And it might not be the kind of thing a person snaps out of.  It might be that life has embittered him (or woken him up?) because that's the true nature of life.


He is making choices and viewing from a life that the earlier him would consider to be unacceptable.  He is a little dark and a little cynical, and a lot sad.  He is making choices and viewing life in ways that I don't like, in ways that make me uncomfortable, and in ways that just makes me sad.  And maybe it's because I'm living in a naive, ignorant, and pitiful existence, but I really like it here, and it's hard not having him here.

What is there to do but keep being his friend?  He's the kind of friend that there is no option to do anything but just that.