On Making Friends

One day I came back from eating dinner in the dome. I went into the bathroom, slipped off my clothes and got into the warm shower. I played 'You don't miss a thing' and 'Ever be' out loud and sang along as I showered, and toweled off, and got into my pajamas. As usual, I had an inner dialogue, which includes thinking about everyone back home, thinking about my day, and thinking about something strange (I think the question on my mind then was 'What makes a good writer?'). I felt everything so viscerally - the slight shift of weight when my cross chain lifted off my chest as I bent forward to put on my pajama bottoms, the slightly damp hair at the nape of my neck, the space between the wet tiles under my feet. I felt so alive.

I thought back to the conversation I had been having in the dome, and I couldn't even remember what it was about. I couldn't exactly even remember who I was across from.

I felt like George Harvey Bone when he snapped out of one of his 'dead moods' (although of course I wasn't having murderous thoughts regarding any of the girls round the dining table). I felt like I had slipped out of a husk of me into my real self once I had closed the door of my dorm room, like a reverse lizard.

But yesterday was the first time here where I laughed till I was tearing. Funnily enough it was over a conversation about how ridiculous laughter is with Alex. Why do people start to shake and emit short gasps of sound? Is laughter always because of funniness or just because of shock? Is anything actually funny or is it just different degrees of shock? What does funny even mean??? That talk gradually mellowed into an exchange of funny stories - and I found myself laughing, and questioning why I was laughing, and still laughing so much that tears sprung into my eyes and my tummy felt that long - lost ache of joy. Later that night Alex came into my room and we had a really nice long talk, and exchanged music. I didn't realise how much I missed things like that.

I hadn't had such a real time with a person for so long that I was beginning to think perhaps university is supposed to get you used to adult relationships. The kind of relationship that will get you through a day in a society that expects you to have friends, where you have someone to eat with, and say 'see you later' to, and walk with, but when you get back to your room you just move on to the next thing on your list, instead of thinking of how nice just spending time with someone is. The kind of friendship where each person inhabits there own little box. Friendships without any lingering phosphorescence.

But I'm beginning to think maybe it won't be lke that after all.

Tomorrow I am going to get falafel and then go to the Fitzwilliam museum with Alex.