Brave

There's probably a blog post somewhere written by me with the same title. In my life I have often been called brave, because I would suddenly up and go, up and change, up and move... when in truth the bravest thing I could ever do, as tweeted a few days ago, is do nothing, change nothing. That is for me the hardest thing. Change and upheaval come very easily. I have dumped a friend, who will not read me here because to find me here (entirely possible) would mean an amount of effort that he would not put in. I dumped him because after 3 years of learning to like, love, accept, bear, withstand his girlfriend, he has has become a person I don't like very much, and eventually all the effort to hold on to the other part of him, the one I loved and depended on, was just too much, and I did the easy thing, what I always do, I finally moved on. It's difficult to do when, older and with many young people and dogs and cats you are responsible for, you can no longer up and leave, like I always did, and he lives around the corner, quite literally, and he works with your husband and was/is his best friend, and is friends with your best friends here, once again, the present or the past tense all depend on his efforts towards them. Now he has lost me he has that little amount of brain and heart he dedicated to me to dedicate to his old friends if he wants to, it's his choice. Windruffle was to be that delicate and recurring breath of air, which would discreetly, and with great effort trying very hard not to be the storm and the whirlwind it used to be, try and create some change, try and open eyes, make you think. If it failed with him, a dear, dear friend who claimed to love me, it failed too greatly to have around anymore. Hence windruffle is gone, Jill is in da house. Conveniently I have done a lot of spring cleaning on twitter too, those that want to follow my ramblings can always find me, with just a little effort. And if they can't make that little effort, it's no great loss. Changes are far far slower when you're older. But you can still make them happen. I knew I made the right decision when almost as soon as I took my friend off my twitter feed, I saw another tweeter post this "quote" (I use the quotemarks as I am pretty sure Calvin and Hobbes never said this, but it was the timing that was important:

Calvin: The problem with you, Hobbes, is you’re always at a loss for words. Hobbes: I’ve found that saves many a friendship. #dailyquote

How telling for it to appear on my feed just after I had used words to kill a friendship (or at least put it in an induced coma for a while). On the other hand, not speaking saves the outside of something, the appearance, the surface. But what of the goings on inside? Who cares about those? In a country that prides itself in outward propriety, I can understand how my need to go deeper at all costs can be seen as extremely inconvenient. But there you go. I have too much around me and cannot, quite simply, afford to waste the time. Be real or have what others have, the surface. It goes both ways. And then, coming back from work the same day. Cambridge is, like a friend so aptly put it, very Groundhog Day-ish: super pretty, but unchangeable, you meet the same people coming and going to work, the people you know do pretty much the sake thing over and over again. I'm bored with Cambridge now, but that's another matter. Thing is, only 3 or 4 times I felt I might meet my friend, and those times I always did. This time, coming back from work, I thought I'd like to know where he is, is he about to take the train, is he coming out of work? He might be on his way to the station now, we might cross paths, how would we react? And as I thought this, there he was. A wave, a sad look and a mouth slightly twisted in bitterness. That's him. Me, fortunately, I had my new sunglasses on. After he passed me, I felt the need to exhale, but all I felt was relief. Three years is a long time to bang your head against a wall, it was a relief to let one of my favourite people go. I may work weirdly, but it's starting to make sense. Goodbye ruffles of wind, welcome Jill.