Relationships, the past, and uncertainty.

I miss the way my friendships and relationships used to be, and I'm not sure if they aren't that way anymore because I just currently don't have around me the right people or if it's to do with the fact that I've gotten older and whatever made the old friendships so special is age-specific, one of those things you can't get back when you get older.

I'm okay if it's something I can't get back because I've grown up, I'll accept that if that's the case, and I'll accept it with grace. It's just not knowing that terrifies me. If and when I know, I'll be able to correctly understand and predict the nature of whatever future relationships I might have. I'll know if there's something in particular to look forward to. If I can expect things to be as they were in the past. Because things don't happen the same way twice, but sometimes certain events are repeated just because they're events that happen to people with a relative degree of frequency, so it makes sense it should happen to you again.

It's making me a bit nervous due to some writing projects that I've gotten myself into that rely upon the premise that I understand friendship and relationships well enough to write a fictional example of one that 1. reads fairly realistically (i.e. you can imagine it being real without a whole lot of suspension of disbelief), and 2. says some things about the nature of friendships and human interactions in general. It's because - and I think a lot of writers do the same - I tend to write examples of things to say something about the thing of which they're an example. A character serves as a reflection of humanity, a situation proves something about how humans react to things, a relationship says something about how people interact with and in relation to each other. It's based on relationships I've had in the past, which is all well and good (sensible, I should think), but I realized that I was much younger than I am now and much younger than the characters in the story when those took place, so...were they like the way they were just because I happened to be lucky enough to meet certain people? Was it because I was young and certain things happen to you only when you're young? Was it because I was young and thus not as jaded about interpersonal interactions as experience and time have made me, and that someone whose experience wasn't the same as mine might be able to experience something much like I did at a different time in my life?

What is realistic for me to imagine for the future and what has been lost with time?

I just wish I knew.