hope; part one: closure and company

18th Apr, 2025

here I am again!!! starting a post at 1:30am lmao

but if not now, when?

Today has been such a goddamn interesting day. About two weeks ago, I happened to run into a couple old housemates at a bus stop in the city. We've had... something of a rocky relationship in the past, so for the first few seconds I certainly had my metaphorical hackles up, not sure what to expect.

But it was chill. They seemed pleasantly surprised to see me, and we chatted for the 15 minutes or so until my bus arrived - mostly chatting shit about another mutual former housemate, if I'm being honest sdkjshd.

It was nice. In a subtle and important way, it was closure - these were people I hadn't seen or really talked to in over a year, despite once being quite close. I thought we'd parted on bad terms, and I was content to live with that.

I'm not sure if I was wrong, or if we've all matured a bit, or if time has just smoothed things over, but regardless; whatever old resentment I expected to find was nowhere to be seen. So, we made a new little groupchat and plans to catch up soon.

Today was the day we did that. And it was as lovely as I hoped.

I brought another friend with me - someone I'd been aching to spend more time with recently, and I went out on an educated guess that the vibes would be a fit. I think it paid off, and we spent the afternoon sitting around, talking about the old days and the new days, eating snacks and smoking an inadvisable number of cigarettes¹.

It doesn't sound like much. There's plenty of people who did this with friends as a matter of course, a regular Tuesday night. For me, it's always been a rarity - this simply isn't the kind of socialisation that I naturally do. On top of that, it was with a couple friends who I hadn't seen in a good long time, and who I never really expected to see again. We'd been through a lot together, but everything eventually changes.

I don't know if we'll do it again. To be honest, I don't even know if I want to. There were good(?) reasons for us parting in the first place, and alas I am something of a believer in patterns. I think I'd be perfectly happy for our lives to diverge again from here. Now I know that if I run into them at a bus stop, we can chat for a few minutes and exchange hugs before we all leave, rather than the mild anxiety and sense of unfinished business that I hadn't realised I was carrying the last two-ish years.

And if we do catch up for cigarettes and snacks again, that'd be wicked too.

<3 <3 <3

I'm so damn sleepy now. I'm pretty sure that when I started this, there was a distinct moral in my mind, a closing paragraph to neatly wrap this up. If you can't tell, this isn't it.

And perhaps that is the moral. Let things happen as they're going to happen.

It was nice to see some old friends, I think is the point. It was nice to have my meager expectations misproven and exceeded, on a whole bunch of fronts today. It was indeed a good one, as well as an interesting one.

You might notice this post is titled as "part one". This is because I intended to write a second post on sorta the same topic, or at least about the same day. Alas that I am falling asleep at my keyboard, but I will try and retain it and write it for y'all tomorrow.

I'm also so so excited to start that photography page like I said I would, and mayve even start doing some silly little reviews and infodumps on more things.

For now, I must away and goodnight. Wishing everyone lovely sleeps! <3