Some days are just like this

When I think a lot. When disappointments threaten to turn into despair. When realisations strike me that must be shared, or at the very least, scribbled somewhere, if only to be read later and laughed at.

So, my big thought:

When I make a friend, I invite that person into my life. To see me in all my moodiness and whimsical behaviour, to know what makes me tick. I learn in turn. About what brings a frown or a laugh. And what must never ever be said.

Perhaps that is the reason why, when a friendship goes astray, I feel like a little part of me is gone as well. That although I will certainly move on, an irreversible change has just occured and a gap in my otherwise neatly chaotic world has been created which can be filled perhaps but never perfectly.

I think sometimes, do the people I have lost feel the same way? And in a twist of circular logic, do they wonder if I wonder about them?

A Wing and a Prayer

12 D laughed. He had dropped his bite-sized melon chunk again. Next to him, 12 C, smiled in exquisitely polite amusement, picked up his own chopsticks and twirled around a plastic tea cup for good measure. "Guess it will take me a while to get the hang of this!"

In front of me, a smooth chignon head bent down to offer colouring books to a suddenly interested toddler.

I was 9C. Aisle. Belted in and alone with my thoughts.

Looking outside, I felt strangely subdued. I was in the presence of something that belittled my worries and mocked my fears. No matter what my inner turmoil, what was real - was what we were surrounded by. Intense pure light. And a canopy of comforting whiteness. This would never fundamentally change. I knew that. But never had that awareness washed over me like it did right then.

9B turned out to be an art historian. The rest of my little journey was spent in happy nothingness.