My Bedside Table

On: Friendships, my new apartment and a fresh start

On my bedside table there are two photos, neatly arranged in cute frames. They have several similarities. Both of them show me. In one of them you can see me with my best friend – Literally everyone ever who doesn’t know me very well thinks he’s my boyfriend and that he looks really young in it. The other is a picture of me, accompanied by the six girls who meant the most to me in the past year of my life, whom I spent my time in Paris with. You don’t see it, because you can’t look in the memory of the moment, but this photograph was taken in front of the Basilica Sacré Coeur in Montmartre. It was one of the first nights we used to go out in Paris and visit places together, more than a year ago.

Both are pictures of people who were important to me. Who are still important to me. Both, kind of, are pieces of my past that I brought with me to this new environment. Apart from them, there is almost everything new, unknown and different around me. I know that this little loneliness which is lurking in my head currently; it is just a side-effect of being alone in this new town, of not knowing anybody, of not knowing where and what and how the things roll. My little furnished room which reminds me of Paris in so many ways is really cute and situated in a nice neighborhood full of grandmas and mowed lawns and old trees not far from Uni. But still there’s this sad and empty feeling.

I know that this feeling will fade in a few months, or hopefully even in a few weeks.  It was just yesterday that I arrived here and unpacked my bags and I hope that this, like in the beginning of my year in Paris, is just a short phase in which I feel unpleasant and strange to this place, to this room, to this town.  I know that this apartment will former or later become my home, like the one in Paris did. And I know, on top of that all, that I will meet a lot of awesome people and that I’ll make new awesome friends here.

“Like I did in Paris”, it flickers through my mind as I’m watching the photo in the picture frame next to my bed. And that I should write the girls more often, that I should check on them so they don’t feel forgotten, because they’re clearly not.

I look at the other photo, and the painted picture in yellow, blue, red and purple that’s on the wall and I get to think about how I shouldn’t forget them neither, these two guys who offered them to me. Because I know we have these awesome special relationships and it would be a pity – well no, it would be a freaking load of shit if our paths would drift too much apart! I don’t want to lose them, how clichéd and facebook-comment-of-a-14-year-old-like this may sound; they’re in my heart.

Friendships are fun, they’re important but they’re also a lot of work. If you don’t call, if you don’t write, if you don’t communicate - you will not make it. This is not about one of two people in a friendship always asking how it goes and the other one not very regularly responding, this is about basic interest of the two of them in the other one’s life. In their hopes, their dreams, the daily life which seems boring sometimes, their fears and anxieties. Well, that really sounds like a whole lot of work, doesn’t it? But it’s worth it and you will appreciate that the other person, if it’s a real good friend of yours, is there for you and will do the same things for you, listens to you when you’re sad or angry and shares his moments with you, like you share yours with them, even when you two are apart.

I learned a lot of these lessons about friendship when I was abroad and I think it is really important to focus on the people you really love and who are truly good friends of yours to lead a happy life. I also know that it’s neither possible, nor healthy to try to maintain this kind of relationship with too many people. That’s the point where you should really listen into your mind and reflect on who you want to spend your time with and why, because somehow, the people we surround ourselves with, say very much about who we really are.

“Somehow, friends were always variables in my life. But some just shouldn’t be.” 

– in a letter from friend of mine

The rest of my bedside table equipment consists only of new things, apart from the awful alarm clock that I’ve owned a few years now and guys, I desperately crave for a new one (because seriously, that’s a hell of a sound to wake up to!).  But unfortunately, I’m the kind of person who doesn’t buy new things if the old ones still work (and I think everyone should be that kind of person #tbh).

Not a lot of new things. Only the nice white grandma-like reading lamp which wears a Swedish woman’s name and a candle I bought at IKEA, too, one week ago, with a lovely vanilla smell. The rest of the table (which is also new and from this same furniture store- surprise, surprise!) is white and neat and in order and tidy. All of them things we all know I’m definitely NOT. 

Maybe this is why I feel a bit strange and “not arrived” yet, too. I need to mess up this place a bit, spread my clothes all over the floor, get it a bit more untidy, more exciting and mostly more colorful. If not, I’m afraid of getting snow blind of all this whiteness! Who’s supposed to live with this? In moments like this I’m happy having bought all those endless postcards and posters to cover the walls with and to be such a brimming source of creativity (sometimes) and come up with many ideas to create a environment I feel at home in and anyone cool will, too.

I’m also happy, that I have a friend, who is like this, too - that made me such a beautiful piece of artwork I mentioned earlier that I have next to my bed (whose title is, meaningfully  “A-part?” ). You could say I work on friendships so they can color my life. The picture is not exactly on the bed side table, but we aren’t nitpickers here, are we?

The subject of this little insight in my loneliness