You wait ages, then…

The last few days I’ve just accidentally met up with people that, for one reason or another, I hadn’t talked to in an incredibly long time. It’s not that I didn’t like them, and I’d hope that they didn’t not like me (ugh, that’s an ugly double negative, but it somehow sounds better than saying “I’d hope they like me”); but for one reason or another, we haven’t talked.

Then meeting them again, it feels entirely natural, like there was never this crazy six-month (or longer) interval: I guess this is what having old friends feels like, but in a way it makes me feel regret for the people that I could have known better, the people I wish I could meet up with again but don’t really know how to ask, and I wouldn’t really know how to start talking to if I did meet up with them. I’d imagine there’d be reminicenses, and a bizarre realisation of just how long it’d been since we first met.

Like the other night I ran into a certain person (I was going to mention by name, but tough) who I realised I met something like three years ago. It’s just… kinda crazy. I feel like I don’t know half the people I’ve met half as well as they deserve, to crib a line. But I’m glad I met them.

Life’s… it’s never ever what you expect, I guess. Being back in Birmingham, it’s been reminding me a lot about the past. A lot of things have gone right, and a some other things, well, not so much. The last three or four years, they’ve been at times some of the best and the worst of my life. I’ve grown. I’ve changed. Some things I’m glad of, and others I’m not, and sometimes confusingly they’re the same things. I sometimes miss the shy, akward little boy I was, sometimes I wish I’d become the person I am today faster; experienced more things, known more people.

I’ve made mistakes. I’ve made more mistakes than I’d care to admit, and… some of them were far worse than I’d care to admit. Some mistakes I didn’t even learn from, and for that… for a lot of things, I’m so very sorry. I wish I had the nerve to apologise to those I wronged. I hope that some day I’ll have the courage to give you the apology you deserve. I hope, at least, that you’re happy.

I have this idea which borrows a bunch of really Christian terminology but uses it in a subjective sense rather than objective. We judge our souls by our own measure of sin, and condemn ourselves to heaven or hell; sometimes I wonder if people – people I care about – are living in their own personal hell, one they’ve lived in so long that it’s started to feel comfortable, closed in by the weight of their own sense of sin.

Sometimes I wonder if that’s where I am. Either that, or the night is making me melancholy. I will adjourn, and climb the wooden hill.

And y’know, comment or something. You don’t have to, but it’d be nice, y’know?