Hooray for Friends!

Yesterday, Adele (plus lovely hubby and gorgeous daughter!) and Paula came round.  We sat in my sunny living room and ate cake and drank tea and talked and relaxed and it made me say to myself...

Hooray for Friends!  I've said it before and I know I'll say it again.  Especially in a season when a lot of things feel like an 'effort', like an uphill struggle - including socialising, and trying to build new relationships.  I've already mentioned that a lot of University friends have moved away from Brighton, or just got busy with life and getting through the week.  Example: Adele lives in Bristol and has a daughter, and Paula is training to become a social worker.  Not easy times!! Studentdom is definitely over, and no, it wasn't 'real' life, but hell yeh do I miss it - not for the studies so much but for the fact that days were planned around PEOPLE, around cups of tea, and coffee and cake dates, and the MEETING house, and dinner together and sitting on the bed catching up, and beach walks, and dancing, and turning up at someone's house at midnight, and exploring and conversing and questionning and laughing and debating and crying and COMMUNITY.

 
And what does that leave us with?  Friends.  Friends with whom I've already walked through struggles and come out the other side, the ones who already know I'm weird and emotional and have not run away, the ones I've laughed and cried with, the ones with whom I never have to pretend, the ones with whom I can talk about everything and nothing, the ones where it doesn't matter how long since I last saw them, the ones where it doesn't really matter what order the words come out in, the ones where we know there will be a next time...  They are a breath of fresh air, a comfort, and a joy.

We were spoilt.  Privileged to have found each other, like sifting through the soil to find the treasure (not that I'm saying other people are dirt... but you know what I mean!).  Not everyone gets the opportunity to meet such a broad range of people as you do at University.  And even there many people do not find others that they truly connect with.  I suppose for some people, the friends they already had - from home/school/gap year were enough - which brings me to my next point:

We're spoiled in more ways than one.  Because after sharing all these experiences with some brilliant people, now it feels hard to believe that any comparable friendships could be formed out of life as it looks now.  Where time is based around other things, and limited, and responsibilities have increased, (and money-for-a-pint-or-two decreased! - how does that work??!!).  And maybe that's OK, because I know I haven't lost my friends, even if I don't see them as much.  Yet we do need people around us in the day-to-day.  We need face-to-face conversations and a good laugh or a good cry.  We need to be able to be ourselves and not self-consciously measuring each word we say.

I don't know what the answer is.  I'm just pondering aloud, as I do.  I don't want to become someone who just can't be bothered to meet new people, because who am I to write anyone off?  There's treasure in every person, something to be learned, a new perspective to look at life from.  I no longer try to be best friends with everyone as I have done in the past.  I know I don't have the capacity.  But I hope I can stay open to new friendships, and not give up too easily.

And in the meantime, I'll say hooray again for those people who have set the standard so high!

AFTERTHOUGHT:  I could have said the same positive things about many other groups of friends: from Basingstoke, Oxford, Zambia and Spain (what with 5 schools and 2 universities, I have made a lot of friends in my life, and I've always made quite an effort...) I guess it's just that University is the most recent experience in terms of making a lot of very close friends, and since then I've felt like I've run out of steam a little!) - hmm there're more to say on this whole friends thing, but must eat my baked potato and get on out or I'll be late, as usual!!