All of a sudden, all of the friends that he used to have, all the people that he used to know were gone before his bright greene eyes. 

     The funny thing was... he had never had a lot of people there for him. He had never been extremely popular, or received excessive attention...

     No... that was not it.

     He had taken the few friends he had for granted, and not invested in them. Before he knew it, they were gone. Gone like the birds that flew south from where he was, to escape the harshly frozen tundra of the north.
     He hadn't thought that he had been neglecting them at the time, but now he saw it all, and the guilt started to creep into his mind.

     Not knowing when it started, he tried to retrace how he had gotten to this point in life in the first place. It almost felt like looking at the life of a stranger. The details were hazy, as if he had been half-asleep when the events were happening.

     Was it not only a fortnight ago that he was in that little apartment, on the other side of town in college, having the time of his life?
...What happened to the life he had once known? 

     As he paid his bills, finished his graduate school, and was on the way to having a doctorate degree, he had brought his attention to his investments, the news, work, and watching the stock market. This remained until he would leave for the weekend to go on a long hiking trip, which was his only salvation in an oasis of blunt despair.

     He felt alone in this little world though, and even more so when he realized how there weren't all those people there for him now. The days he had once looked forward to seemed so much more dull and worthless than they did before. 

     ...But that wasn't all his fault, of course.

     After all, some people had moved away and it was beyond his control.
     The part that was his fault was how after they left, be it for spring break, for a year, or for what appeared to be forever, he hadn't put in the effort to to stay in contact. Most of the phone numbers had been lost, and he didn't know where his old notebook of addresses lay in the house.

     He frantically sifted through each drawer of his office desk for old postcards, Christmas cards, phone numbers, business cards, anything that had the potential to reconnect him with someone, anyone who could finally jolt him back into his senses, and make things the way they once were.

     Really, he thought, the only people who remained were his parents, who would visit more than thrice per year. They had always supported him... and for that he was grateful...

     He thought that his parents were all he had... But that's until he remembered one friend in particular...