Thursday 17 April 2008

Susie is thinking wishfully

So let’s face it, I’ve done a whole load of myspace bulletin quizzes recently, they’re pretty dull and are a poor distraction from work and the such, but I suppose they’ve had their advantages (depending on which way you look at it) in that most of what I’m going to write today has been inspired by them. They're disjointed and longwinded, but who are we kidding, this is a blog not an essay.

One question which seems to crop up on every quiz is something along the lines of ‘Do you miss anyone right now?’, and there isn’t a single one I’ve read where the answer to that has been a definitive no. I guess missing people is just something that happens all the time to all of us. It’s something I’m not sure if I admire or despise about the human race, that we have such a desire to be sociable, that the inability to be so actually causes us a level of pain.

One of the best known side-effects of pregnancy is unusual cravings. A little while ago I learnt that cravings are actually based on genuine needs your body has. If you’re Vitamin C levels are low, you may well crave citrus fruits. The reason women get such weird cravings during pregnancy is that their hormones mess things up so they misperceive the genuine need. Could it be that we actually crave the company of a certain person? Maybe that dull ache we call ‘missing someone’, is actually our bodies’/brains’ way of telling us we need them.

I’ve come to realise how very much I appreciate consistency in my life. You wouldn’t believe it, because I’m one of the least consistent people you’ll find. In German for example, I hadn’t handed one piece of work in on time this year, until this week, were I handed all three in on time. In relationships, I chop and change; I’ll be happy one day and depressed the next. Perhaps it’s just called being a teenager, but either way, I’m horrifically inconsistent. But for some reason, I like the simple constants I have. I like to have a bracelet I wear every single day; not because it means something to me, not because it was a gift, not for any reason other than that I wear it every day. I like having someone I talk to every single day; someone that I know wants to talk to me every day as well. Someone with whom it’s just a given that we will have a conversation that day, and if one of us doesn’t start it, the other one will. Maybe I just think that if something is consistent enough, I can never lose it, and I think I’m more scared of losing things than I like to admit. It terrifies me that one day in the future; I might have completely lost contact with the people who today are so very important to me. My parents never talk to their secondary-school friends. If one good thing comes from the excessive amount of technology around today, perhaps it’ll be that I won’t have to lose my friends like they have.

And every time I think about this, it irritates me how very much effort I have to put into reminding myself that I have a friend who is absolutely and completely constant. I have a friend who I can talk to every day. I have a friend I can talk to every minute if I want to. I have a friend who not only can I never lose contact with, but that can never die. I have a friend who will love me consistently, no matter what I do. God is the only thing that I know will always be consistent in my life. I guess it must just disappoint him that I’m still horrifically inconsistent myself.

Susie is moving on to something else entirely.

I’m starting to wonder if there’s actually anything better than two people being genuinely in love. Because that just encompasses everything doesn’t it? And I don’t mean the sort of ‘love’ I hear about when one of my friends has been going out with her new boyfriend for three months and they really like each other and everything. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not doubting their relationship (well, in most cases anyway), they could have the closest relationship that anyone can at our age; I just don’t think it’s on the same scale as when we’ve grown up and got a load more life experience. I don’t know, maybe I’m just too cynical, but who of us hasn’t thought we were in love, but then looked back and realised we weren’t even close? Hell, I just really hope I get there sometime.

I’m going out for dinner with Rosie tomorrow, to café Rouge, where we’ve been twice before; to order moules-frites which I’ve ordered twice before; to discuss important things and frivolous things back to back, like we have twice before. Another wonderful little tradition, a consistency.

Susie is really looking forward to it.

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