The term “friendship break-up” has gained popularity in recent years. I often read articles and think what an ordeal to have somebody you cherished and shared so much with slowly morph into a stranger. How gruesome it must be to walk past a former friend on the street and not know how to greet them. I often count myself lucky at having a spectacular teaming mass of friends in my life and at never having to experience the rotting corpse of a dead friendship. Continue reading
Settle for somebody who will bring you flowers: not just for birthdays and anniversaries, but also, just because. Somebody who will move all your spiders. Somebody who lends you books with the page corners folded down and scribbled notes in the dust jacket like a portal to their thoughts. Settle for a person who will hold a constant umbrella over your parade.
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Those who have been single for a long time will know that you gather up exes. The significant others who actually, in the grand scheme of things, turned out not to be so significant. Things didn’t get serious for long enough to cause a full-on heartbroken split from when things end, and most of the time you don’t meet the prerequisites to be banished from each others lives.
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You don’t hear about the hours they spend memorising freckles. You don’t hear about the time they bought a pair of socks from Joy The Store at the train station – full price! £8 on a pair of socks! – so that you wouldn’t have to re-wear a pair. You don’t hear about the picturesque night they practised slow dancing when they got in from the club, an endeavour that ended with their first perfect kiss timed miraculously with a Bright Eyes chorus at sunrise, a moment so utterly cheesy it could have been a scene in a John Green novel. Continue reading
Sometimes you meet people and they make everything feel magic. Those people who can immediately lock into your brain and understand. Maybe you sit around picking out constellations together. Maybe they make streetlights seem beautiful. Maybe they turn hours into adventures. Maybe they drive across two counties to look after you when your kidneys give up even though you can only communicate through squeaking and tears. Maybe they remember every stupid thing you have ever said to them when you yourself have long forgotten. Maybe they can count to ten.
Maybe they pop into your life for a few days per year and then vanish into the ether again, leaving your world rearranged and fluttering. Maybe they are next to you all the time, an endless source of magic for all your boring days. Maybe you’ve never met them, but you can feel them so keenly they’ve had a huge, life-shaping impact on you anyway, channeling their own magic into your words, your thoughts, your attempts.
The people you meet for an hour and know you want in your life forever. The people who inspire you just by turning up. The people you can’t possibly let go of even though you understand the lesser power of your own potential magic. They’re not always yours to keep. That’s just the way it goes sometimes.
TAPE PARADE 