‘She understood me and I her’ my mum texted me after her oldest pal passed away recently and that line really hit me.

I brace myself for losing old friends because it would be less like losing a limb and more an entire wing of your mental library. All those jokes and memories and references all gone or, at least, rendered meaningless outside the walls of your own skull.

Often I’ll think of something and instantly realise I’ll have to share that thought with a certain friend because only that friend will truly get it. It scares me that one day I might have a thought and there’ll be no one left to pick it up and mix it up and throw it back to me. 

Age, man. It sidles up and surprises you with things like this, things that should have been obvious. But there’s the inverse of course: if you’d never have known these friends then you’d never have these wings of your mental library in the first place. 

I like understanding people and they me.