On Old Friends
My academic career has spanned three continents, countries and schools. (I’m not counting my short-lived time at university for reasons I may or may not get into at a later date). Morocco, specifically Casablanca, is where I spent the first ten years of my life. I’m too young to be saying my memory isn’t what it used to be – but, well, it isn’t. And so I have this strange dichotomy of knowing I made good friends, and knowing I had great times with them in theory, but in practice, what that has boiled down to is a dozen or so fuzzy snapshots in my mind. Sure, if I return to the school after a long period of time away, as I did recently, some dusty old neural pathways wake up long enough to spark some moments of fondness or recognition. This is all a prolonged attempt at an explanation as to why I just haven’t kept in touch with my Moroccan friends. Yes, social media and the current definition of ‘keeping in touch’, along with sheer distance and the span of time since I’ve seen them hasn’t helped either, I’m sure.
Then came three years in Bombay. Those being the beginning of my ‘formative years’, I have a lot more vivid memories of the time, and just a lot more memories in general. The friends I made there I’ve been in contact with from time to time, and I’m glad that those friendships remain as easy to jump back into as they always were, with little sign of the years that separated us. The move, then, from Bombay to boarding school in the southwest of England was a massive change, even if it didn’t really feel like it at the time. My attitude towards making and sustaining friendships changed completely, and I ended up setting a distance between myself and everyone else, a protective barrier of sorts I imagine my subconscious thought was a stellar idea. Thankfully, my attitude and circumstances changed quite a bit in my final two years there, and so I am grateful for the friendships (however disparate) that came as a result.
To get to my actual point, I met an old friend from India in London today. It was he who suggested it, which I definitely appreciated because there is that hateful part of my brain that instantly questions the motives of anyone I talk to, and so it being his idea kept that part at bay. It was the kind of reunion I wrote of earlier, in which little effort goes into getting back to the comfortable ways of old. Like my sister told me once, and I’m paraphrasing, ‘you shouldn’t have to try so hard with conversations, like maybe don’t prepare a whole list of topics to discuss out of fear of awkwardness’.
Honestly, though, while I have always been open to the idea of reaching out to and keeping in contact with ‘old friends’, I have equally always done enough mental gymnastics to justify to myself that this isn’t something I want, or that it wouldn’t go well. And in that respect, it is so beautiful to be proven wrong. While, in essence, nothing has changed, I feel a definite shift in my attitude towards rekindling friendships. Don’t get me wrong, it still feels terrifying, and that judgemental part of my brain I should definitely excise still pipes up, but it does seem a more attainable goal now, one which I know working towards would be good for me. So, yay. Progress.