Today--

Despite my faults (a nonexistent sense of direction, the propensity to get lost and to walk faster than my companions, and occasional flights of fancy that find greatest release in sidewalk monologues), 2013 has consistently gifted me with companions (compatriots) who appreciate more than disdain my chatter and humor. The prospect of meeting people and summoning a relationship from thin air has always seemed daunting and terrifying to me. It’s never easy to initiate conversation and more often than not, I go out on a limb when I assume—based on body language like bobbing knees, the frequency and duration of sidelong glances—how certain people gravitate toward food or cooking or metallurgy. And often I prefer to ask questions. Whatever you might think, the only honest truth is I never fully recovered from the shyness of a closeted fifteen year-old recluse. But today, by some happy coincidence, a friend of mine introduced me to one of her colleagues who possessed, in no small amount, the same spark and sense of humor, sense of adventure, that I find most appealing.

The cynical (jaded?) part of me has always (and will always) believe that making friends will become more and more of a challenge as we grow old(er). Already, I’ve learned not to compromise, how much to concede, and how to stand my ground. But as we sat close together on the bus home (the first one we saw whose placard advertised SM Fairview, Cubao, EDSA, a hasty choice I wish I could unmake),I stared at the flowing lights of the metro fall away. Although all day I had felt the resistance of an immutable and smooth barrier against real talk (the kind that makes you want to stay) or the natural hesitancy behind which everyone hides behind, and although I had clenched my fists ready to beat against it or make an ass of myself trying, by the end of our dinner, I finally felt it dissipate, dissolve, wash away in the steady and steadily growing warmth. Bright blue and lit somewhere far away, like the neon glow of the mall sign we followed across an empty lot, it was something that exists still in some future, netted and clasped in circumstance like the promise of fate or the fruit of a conspiring and undulating universe.

I glanced around at the unfamiliar smile of another person I had roped into stories, woven anecdotes around, formed opinions about, a boy I had tried to impress because he was friends with someone I had, all along, been trying to impress.  

(originally posted on Smallest Giant)