A friend for every season

No filter blue skies

I don't know if I've recently mentioned my Netflix "addiction" on here but I had to tear myself away from that app so my brain could expand and think about other things. I'm working very hard to cut down my film & entertainment consumption but also trying to fill up that time with healthier things and not extra time at work or unnecessary grocery store trips. One of the things that I really want to do instead is read more (I feel like I talked about this before) and to especially get through that one Urdu book I managed to bring from back home — Qurat-ul-Ain Haider's Aag Ka Darya. Having conversations with A, I realised my mother-tongue skills are rather subpar and I wouldn't want my children growing up like that so I need to improve. I'm lucky that at least I get to have a partner I can do this with. It's really why I never picked up German in all my years abroad.

Speaking of German, M spontaneously decided to meet up this weekend and I couldn't be more thrilled. And to add to that, she reached out the next day as well and asked if I'd like to hang out with her again. I really like that we go way back, that when I look at all my time here, in all these years, I can say I've made one real good and true friend. And it's funny how that can happen when you share so little and so much with someone at the same time. It was around five years back that we met coincidentally because she was visiting my then-flatmate and we hit it off instantly. As I grow older, I wonder if I can have more similar sustainable friendships, even with people who grew up in the same culture as myself. I don't want to be one of those married people whose life revolves around their partner and their partner is their only friend. The both of us don't want that for each other. But I wonder.

Being a grown-up is hard, right? You have got to make the right moves all the time. One misstep and your progress is set back by weeks and months. Honestly, the days are flying. It was last Friday only yesterday and now we're going to begin the sixth week of the year? A month isn't enough to learn, and two months seem like a challenge as well. Where will I be by the end of June? I can't say I'm exhausted — far from it — but do yearn for the days of my childhood where the future seemed merely like a mythical beast (and I was a child who wasn't afraid of beasts). Sometimes I wish we could have a do over with the awareness and insight gained in all our years. But then I think of A and I don't want it any other way. Interesting that destiny is what you make of it (or what I made of it). People who don't know where I came from wonder what I've done in all my years here. Well, that's not a story for them to hear.