You learn a great deal from your friends. Including things about yourself that you thought you had figured out all by yourself. Agreed, some of it is a terrible balm of calmness in the face of adversity ("They can fuck themselves, you're fucking great!") but most of it is an eye-opening realisation into what you are seeking (as validation), and what you are evading (as awareness). 

I've negotiated a lot of relationships in the last few years. 

I would have written "the last couple of years" but I was made to realise, recently, "couple" means "two" and thus, I can't loosely use the term "a couple of..." in context to time unless I mean it as a synonym for two. It was a friendly realisation, one I can't shake off despite not believing in it fully. 

Right, where was I? Relationships. 

I was going through my backed-up photos recently and taking my date through them. We're in that part of courtship where you can somehow trust them with your ugliest self with braces as an adult but don't fully trust them when they tell you to use their OTT subscriptions that they're willingly ready to share with you. Sifting through thousands of files, between years interspersed as folders, I found so many dead relationships with people who once meant the world to me. There are people who were a big part of my life (who I have written a great deal about here), then there are those who made fleeting appearances at events or those you've known through friends of friends, or friends of siblings, friends of cousins, etc. Basically, people who've been at all your birthday parties the last couple of  few years and then those who made a fleeting appearance in your life. 

I have three graveyards full of these people on my phone memory. More, somehow, appeared when I logged in to Facebook after a long hiatus to go through photographs and accept the date's friend request (ngl, that felt pop af in 2023). 

In seeing these faces, who once felt like a great deal to my life and meant a lot to me, I fully gathered something that Sinner told me last week—how she's grateful to see me make choices that I'd never ordinarily make and give people a chance I wouldn't ordinarily do. I am nothing like the person I was six months ago. While growth and moving forward is the way to life, she complimented me on picking paths and people who were nothing like my comfort zone. 

Maybe this is why those who had to stay in the past, are languishing there and those who could stick around to see me make different choices and not repeat the same mistakes of my path, bought a ticket for life. 

In these 16 remarkable years of writing on this page, I am nothing like the person I once was. Heck, I'm not even the person I was six months ago. There is no greater meaning to life or my methods to madness. All I know is that you strive to move and strive to grow and keep rolling down and up depending on the motion you're feeling comfortable with at the moment. 

Sometimes it pays off and you find yourself an audience that is willing to watch you move at 10 Kmph and they cheer you to push it to the fourth gear, step by step. There are others who are here to watch you burn your car after falling off the cliff. Only, they lose interest in your transitions and servicing mode when you're trying to be on the road to recovery. You'll find yourself in their block lists and out of their lives when you discover they've virtually cut you off, a signal that you're no longer entertaining them in the way they seek. That's okay. You'll find other viewers and other takers as you go along. 

To be honest, all of last month, I struggled with the idea of keeping this page live. A tart feedback email and another feedback sent me off into a spiral of overthinking. I questioned everything I did in the last two decades, including getting to a path of monetising my writing in a way it paid me to build a new life and another one from scratch. Was it all a waste or a farce? Perhaps it was, but again, I tell myself not everyone is interested in a ticket to my life show and even if the theatre is running empty, we've seen Housefull days and people fight for tickets. It's a matter of putting on a show for the world. 

I've been writing longer than I've known some of my closest friends in the world. It's tiring to be vulnerable and despised at once. It's exhausting to continuously fight through the world. I've had a lot of those lately, personally and professionally. It's okay, I guess. It's all a part of the process. The process is where I find those who will stick with me for as long as I am around. Like this page, that has seen the weather change, friends come and go, institutions offering me a seat and letting me go, dates that featured here, those who became reluctant lovers, and life that passed by me from my teens through twenties to now my thirties. It's seen things and perhaps you will too. 

Strap on that belt; we're about to rock 'n' roll.