Isn't it a sweet song? It holds so beautifully on the fine edge between camp-ness and stark poignancy. It fills my chest with a bubble of diffuse pride and affection for random friends, those whose worth seems to go unnoticed by most, most of the time, so much that even they forget it, and then lose their brand of shine and light.
I turned eighteen yesterday and it was such a beautiful day, one of those precious ones when life feels like the most exquisite art - and I am both an overjoyed participant and a mesmerised spectator. Looking around - to the people who fill my days, to my memories, to my dreams and expectations -, I perceive with clarity how everything in life keeps morphing into new shapes, and presenting me with new challenges.
I am the luckiest I could be.
I was gently placed in the world by a loving family - and the world has been kind to me. I have been given so many chances to learn and to grow up, and I have taken them (much thanks to the encouragement and strength of the people who surround me). I have somehow made friends - extraordinary ones -everywhere, and from each I have learnt the art and joy of living, and with all I have shared my own small discoveries. Perhaps best of all, there is still so much more to take from the world and to give to others.
Every Summer, the same thing happens: the structure lent to my life by school crumbles apart and friendships are suddenly exposed to the harsh light of our human failings - laziness, selfishness, fear, disinterest. We strive to believe the lies we tell each other - "I miss you", "I can't wait to be with you", and the like -, but these are shown to be a sham by our lack of actual effort to share and communicate with each other.
It is my fault as well, I am not a hopeless victim of circumstances beyond my control: I know I tend to live very much inside my own head, and that I often choose to stay home reading something interesting instead of going out (mostly, this is a passive choice of not inviting people to go out, not an active choice of refusing invitations). And then, of course, friendship requires effort. It must be nourished and fed, otherwise it dies away in a surprising short time.
And then there is that sickening little jolt when you are walking up the stairs in the dark, expecting another step where there isn't any, and you feel, for a milisecond, that you're doomed. Poof! Your friends? Gone. Strangers with the same physical appearance - often not even that - have taken their place, and look at you through bleary eyes, and new tonalities fill their voices as they talk of the distant land of their lives.
You can just picture them, at that moment, following the small steps of some sterotypical existence which fits their social position and apparent disposition. Sure, you wish them happiness, but in an empty way which is not at all like the personal, shared fever of the "once upon a time" of that particular friendship.
Maybe the issue here is that, in our personal relationships, we tend to suppose others - and yourself - will stay the same, so that you can carry on sharing indefinitely. It is part of our ever-present desire for immortality. But life is not a museum, and people will always be swerved in different directions by diverging pressures, and make different choices. In this way, they will take different shapes: the "self" is not fixed, it is simply the sum total of experiences and genetic background.
I suppose it is a good thing that the Summer gives us a chance to get some perspective on our relationships, to analyze other people's behaviour and to decide if we want to let them go or cling to them. The lack of the artificial constraints of school life gives freedom to make these important choices. This year, as school is gone for good, the perspective I get is particularly unclouded; and I know that, from now on, all the friendships I have made will require even more effort to stay alive.
Still, it does not fill me with joy to be disappointed, to find faults which I cannot overlook and which stop me from trusting, and even make me question if I ever knew them. I don't like losing people; but it is unavoidable.
