Time with friends

So I ran away. Not quite, but I had to get out of my mom and step-dad’s house. I wrote out a few of my thoughts about that, but it’s too depressing and intimate for this blog. But basically, it had soured, so I came out to Washington DC to stay with some family.

I’m at my cousin’s house, my mother’s niece. She’s older than me, and he two kids are getting ready to finish high school. Nevertheless, Kathleen and I are the most alike out of all of our family, and it’s delightful to spend time out here. Xerxes came to stay here while I travelled in Europe (as discussed on this blog), and she’s taken great care of him. It’s nice to be reunited with him; he clearly remembers me well.

Being in DC is also an opportunity to catch up with friends: I looked up my friend Jacob from university and he was happy to hang out with me. Earlier this week we had dinner together; today we went hiking with some friends. We went up to West Virginia in a borrowed toyota sequoia, which is a minivan inside and an off-roader outside. We ate at the excellent restaurant of an aunt’s of one of our party; I had fried catfish and succotash; there was spiced butternut squash cake for dessert.

They were all lovely people; one works as a research assistant in an HIV/AIDS clinic, another in a development government agency, another as a “consultant” for a tech startup, another as a data scientist, another is sort of floating like me. We all speak the same language, as it were.

In Chicago I was around a lot of lovely people, but almost all of them 20 or more years older than me. It was wonderful to encounter and be exposed to people and learn from them, but people in their 40’s are in a very different place than people in their 20’s; it’s nice to be with people having the same experiences.

At university, it’s easy to get used to being around people who are largely in the same position you are; I’m not sure what the real world equivalent for “what year are you in? what do you study?”. I suppose that we get to talk about who we are.

I spent a fair amount of time around people my own age out in Italy (though I was much younger) and in the hostels, but it was nice to meet them in a non-transient way. I don’t know–that sounds rude. But the people I met in traveling (the few) were at most for a day; besides one, we haven’t really spoken since. On the other hand, a single day of encounter can be enough: a few minute conversation or common glance can establish the tacit understanding that we see and know one another.

Anyhow, I ramble. That’s how you know that I had a good time. But yes, fair reader, things are going well.