When two people who haven't seen each other in over ten years meet, it gets interesting.
Especially when they have such a weird history. What I mean with that is: They met during the height of their puberty, a time when there were no other men in their life other than two members of Take That. That then turned into a slightly amusing "habit" for Oasis, or a deeply-grounded love for Liam and Noel. It included traveling around Europe to see said band, and to see others, such as Blur. Unfortunately it also meant seeing NoWaySis, a really bizarre Oasis tribute band, which strangely enough played in Cologne. They were nice blokes though, so nothing much to complain about there.
Things went wrong as one of the two decided to go down the depressed-strange Manics fan, the other into a first-anorexic-then-bulimic girl with a habit.
As the school girls, who incidentally lived over 200 km from each other, grew into "adults" and one graduated school to become a nurse, the other graduated to become a "Londoner", there was no contact anymore.
The strange thing about this is that all that time, me being one of the two, I thought about the other one, call her N for privacy sake. All the time. And when the phone rang a few weeks ago and it was her, it was as though we had never not been in touch. At such a turbulent time in my life, this was just a nice surprise and maybe what I needed.
So today we met. And was it weird? No, not at all. The hugs were as tight and sincere as 12 years ago. The laughs and giggles were too. The fact that we live incredibly different lives did not matter. A nurse and a teacher, both to some extent quite heart-broken, had a laugh as though it was 1995.
I don't think this happens to everyone. In fact, a few, or more years ago, I bumped into an even older friend. She ties into the above-mentioned friendship and the connector between me and N. She was my best friend at the time, and N's penpal. We were all, incidentally, into Take That. Her name is Y.
When I met Y some time ago, she had a child. At that point, she was way too young for that, in my eyes. She was so different. And unhappy. We never managed to stay in touch.We had nothing in common, and nothing to say to each other.
Strange how these things are. Today will still require me to catch up with another friend. But first.... a relaxing bath.
