post - uni - dissonance

After finally coming home from my first semester, from being in such a new environment, the forced distance from what once was my everyday has eroded things that I had conditioned myself to believe were going to be permanent.

I came back to London and made plans with my friends, and when those plans came into fruition I was once again surrounded with the warmth of familiar faces, comforted by girlish laughter and the sweet cacophony of noise, our noise, that I had been itching to be a part of again.

We all spoke like no time had passed, but all while taking subtle note of the fact that we were growing up, but the loveliest part of that recognition is that we'd do it together !

but if you read my title the focus is the dissonance.

Despite all of the above, and my general contentment with being home, I cant help but feel the missing pieces. Those that never really played significant roles, but I cherished to a reasonable degree. Those that were more peripheral than integral in my life, and I the same in theirs, not close enough to hang out, but would occasionally find ourselves in similar circumstances. I don't miss them per se, but a strange under current of longing consumes me every now and then, to forcefully make small talk in the queue to the 'pod' or have an extensive conversation in the girls toilet just before class and never speak again, to quickly share ideas and reassure each other before an exam, to offer a passing smile and have it returned.  My mundane weekly routine has now become something I crave, if I knew that certain conversations would be my last, maybe I would've cherished them more.

But time only moves forward so now I'm sat in the present day, typing this, hoping to re-live those short bursts of interactions, or maybe, to my dearest peripheral characters, the strings of fate will bind us together again.