Leaving (part 2): Friends

Last night I went out for my birthday. We got a curry from Brick Lane, drank too much free wine and rolled along to Commercial Tavern and Big Chill. It was fun. I was on classic Hannah form, bouncing instead of dancing and demanding hugs (when I'm tipsy I have a compulsion to be hugged - it's got me into many sticky situations and I have now learned that I should always take along a non-predatory male who knows this to act as chief-hugger, and so evade the need to drunkenly explain that no, I don't want to be kissed or groped, just hugged in a platonic friendly fashion)

At the beginning of the evening I got a phone call from my buddy Henny (Henrietta - her entire family have very long names that demand shortening), sniffling because she'd read my blog and missed me. Henny buggered off to France a few months ago to be a wife and drive a car, raise a child, own furniture and other grown-up things like that. For a while, Henny was only a bus-ride away and now she's a train+plane+car ride away and soon she's going to be car+plaaaaaaaane+car.

And not just Henny. All of my friends will soon require multiple modes of transport, time and money in order to see them.

I remember with a chill how when I lived in Boston for my Masters, I felt at times that I had lost the essence of me - the person who bounces instead of dancing. Because that easy happiness comes out with familiarity and comfortableness, with hanging out with people who I know love me and accepting that as a fact without question. Of course in America I have Jeremy's friends and Jeremy's family, all of whom are lovely and (I think!) like me, but they're his - not mine. And while they may become 'mine' too, it wont happen overnight.

It's going to take time, this building of a life. But I know it can be done. One of my closest friends in the world was made at work - all it took was a late night trip to a Manchester Casualty (trans. an ER, in the city of Manchester) and a few women shouting 'Herpes' at each other (in the waiting room - not us), for us to become inseparable. Now a weekend without at least one day with Sian feels somewhat incomplete.

You see, it's one thing standing on street corners with signs and making new friends, it's another thing leaving behind my 'old' friends - the ones with the history and the stories - the ones that know my tendency to hug when drunk and protect me accordingly.

Saying goodbye to these people is not going to be easy. Basically the only tolerable solution is for everyone to move to Boston. OK?