Naomi

I want answers to unanswerable questions. Why are things like this and why are things like that? Poetry and books and art provide company but no answers.

I am not sad, just confused. All I am sure of is how the most important thing in life is love? The fact that I can only end that sentence with a question mark means, of course, that I’m not sure. I don’t know about love between two people, at least not yet, but I do know love between friends has filled my heart with a warmth it has never really felt before.

When last week my flatmates and I staged our own Christmas day together, I wondered whether I was the happiest I’d ever been in my life. We swapped Secret Santa presents, ate our Christmas dinner around the table, and watched films the rest of the day on mattresses we’d pulled into the kitchen. Then the fog came and it felt frosty for once, I went to a Christmas-carol service with my best friend, and I finally found some tinsel at Sainsbury’s. Then came another evening, another excuse to dance and drink, and I tried a shoulder stand on my bed and bent my thumb back so it became swollen, but I still went dancing and he came to my door at four o’clock in the morning and I squeezed his hand when I had a middle-of-the-night panic attack. “I am going to breathe with you,” he said.

It was warm and then it was cold. I remembered what Christmas felt like when I was a little girl. I was happy. I was definitely definitely happy.

Now I am home again, and my friends are spread across the country. Little spots of love, or something. ♦