In hindsight: On comfortable friends

Big topic.

So the last four years have been a little bit of a rollercoaster - intensely good times followed by silence. There were years where I was completely disillusioned and disappointed (mostly with myself) with those seemingly faithful promises of friends forever made way back in high school. They didn't materialise in the way I expected them to, which sucked at the time. I've probably seen them more this year, even if it's only on football nights, than in the previous three years put together, which is pretty pathetic. I blame it on the great Zone 1 divide - it was them and us. It is definitely very embarrassing that Zone 1 only covers about thirty to forty blocks lengthwise, and we still can't make that distance to see them - only Londoners would understand. This year though it was made a little smaller by a direct bus that goes from outside our door to theirs.

They're still great to hang out with, comfortable, y'know, like pyjamas, but whether we're ever going to get that level of closeness back, that "I so knew you were going to say that" intimacy is going to take a lot of work it seems, not helped at all by our impending careers.

It used to bother me, an anger that at one point translated into not wanting to see them at all - which was easy once the invites stopped coming anyway and the excuses flowed better. There were people who fought hard, but you run out of energy after a while. But I suppose even the strongest of friends grow apart, it had to happen so I finally let it go. It sometimes bothers me now that maybe I let go too easy, that the only way to find out a little bit of what they're thinking or going through is by reading the messages on their Facebook walls from other friends. It sucks, but again, things are getting easier and easier to shelve away, and if they do well-up again, well there's always Facebook for general stalking purposes.

I suppose here's the where the advice starts, only I won't be giving any because it feels like I haven't done well at all, sitting here regretting all the lost time. I only hope that in the years to come, our jobs don't take us too far away. Then again, it might just make us fight that little bit harder to make time for the occasional football match and dinner together.