University Thoughts – We Were Friends Once

When we first met we were both young and innocent and the world was exciting to us. We were ready for a fresh start; to say goodbye to what we had once seen and knew. You were merely a boy and I a girl, yet I think we found a sense of one another in each other. I wouldn’t go so far as to say kindred spirits, and I don’t believe in fate or destiny but almost our friendship was meant to be. I think we were meant to be friends.

But you aren’t that boy anymore, and I am not that girl. We’ve seen more things, we’ve been through more things. We struck a cord with one another but then without either of us realising we brought knives into play, and stuck them into our friendship. One that was once so pure and real and strong and right. We lodged those knives into one another and since then have done nothing but push and twist them. The wound dripping blood and tainting the memories that I had once cherished.

When I look at you now I do not see that boy anymore. I do not seem him at all, I cannot find that friend in there anymore, because you are not him. And you don’t see the girl that I was either. We were once in sync, our friendship and our lives side by side but now we’ve dispersed and too much has happened, the knife has gone in so deep that it had to be taken out. The blood isn’t dripping on what was once our friendship, it’s covered it, and it’s gone, soaked in red.

We are not the same people we were when we first met. I look at you and I don’t see him, you may as well be a stranger to me now. It’s wrong because you wear his skin and I wear hers, but they left, we aren’t those people anymore. And its all rather melancholy, to stand opposite one another where smiles and laughter and happiness and secrets and adventures were once shared, and now it’s just stale air of two strangers, who carry bags of tainted memories.

Thought no.107 – Strangers off the Internet

We are always warned about strangers on the internet. That pretend they are one person when they are actually some pervy 5o year old man. Of course in some cases this is true but sometimes it isn’t. Tumblr has exposed me to the true wonder that is internet strangers. People so kind and thoughtful and so damn creative. The internet makes the world so much smaller and allows you to connect and talk to people all over the world. It’s truly beautiful.

I am thankful for the internet everyday and the wonders that it possesses. But most of all I love those strangers on the internet. The lovely ones that create such beautiful things and whose words fill me with such joy. As Blanche says in A Street Car Named Desire by Tennessee Williams ” I have always depended on the kindness of strangers”. It is true strangers’ kindness can really change a person’s day.

Thought no.36 – Strangers

They’re everywhere. You can’t go anywhere without running into one. There are more of them then there are people you are familiar with. There will always be more of them. You can’t hide from them. Or run away from them. This is life and in life strangers follow you everywhere you go. Being an avid commuter on buses I am constantly bombarded with strangers. Now and again I’ll recognise a face as our routines clash and we become regular strangers within each others lives.

Strangers I see are background characters to me, but I am a background character to them. So on a bus with a collection of main characters all stuck within one proximity you can’t help but feel overwhelmed. Strangers are a creature that all of us are afraid of, we are afraid that a stranger might say something to us or ask us a question, or we might be afraid to embarrass ourselves in front of one of them. We are afraid to show ourselves up and give a terrible first impression.

The truth is, we all too engrossed in ourselves to care about each other. For a second I might wonder about these strangers and their own stories. But that moment passes and I am back to being the selfish human that I am and thinking about my own life.

They are beautiful creatures that we should cherish more. We need to face our fears, because a stranger can open us up into a new world. Just reaching out to a stranger immediately means we are no longer a background character without a cameo, or a line in their story, or a mention of our face. If we reach out to them, whether it be with a smile, a question, a compliment, we are immediately making our stories cross. Through just becoming a regular in someone else’s life means I have breached the cover of their book and have been allowed to become part of their story and them part of mine.

Strangers are amazing and I wish I wasn’t so afraid of them. I wish I wasn’t afraid because they can take me on a whole new adventure even just for a second; strangers are what get us out of our own story and into someone else’s. They let us breach a new world which our friends and family can’t give us as they are part of our stories. Strangers aren’t but they could be and that is the most exciting thing of all. A stranger’s world is completely foreign and unknown to us and that is the most exciting thing of all because there is this whole person with a past and a future that you may never know, but you could. That’s the thing with strangers there is that possibility that they could be something within your story. They could be a vital character, a vital plot point. The possibilities that lay within this person is what makes a stranger a stranger. If only we weren’t all so afraid to reach out.