Where am I exactly?

Was talking about drinking buddies with a friend last Friday evening over a round of drinks and the question popped up that she asked me, "So, who are your friends?" It's an OK enough question, except that looking back, I didn't think I had a good answer for her. Or at least one that was good enough for myself anyway.

The sad truth is that, probably as a result of the past 5-6 odd years, I have been hanging out in ever-changing circles, most of which have very little connection with each other. People whom I consider friends end up being the rare few persistent people that I manage to keep in contact with, and whom I have been persistent enough to attempt to establish and re-establish contact with every time I find myself in the same place that they are. But I have found few friends who are able to relate to the whole gamut of places and people that is the mess I call my life.

She summarized this (as now I know she is won't to do) very succinctly and matter-of-factly, as "you mean all your friends are all in different countries?"

Well... yes, and no. Physically, they are all travelling to different places. But intellectually, there will not be anyone else but me who have travelled to all the exact same places that I have been to, and shared smiles with all the exact same people that I have met. There will not be a single person except myself who would have mirrored those exact same steps that I have taken, and similarly, I have not been able to be a friend to anyone by growing up with them, watching them through all the steps they have taken in their lives, and being with them in the same place at the same time all the way. In that moment I realised that, looking back at my life, my relationships (and not just friendships) have been a sequence of long, and long-distance relationships.

The people that I have come to become close to are not exactly always the people I have come to promise to stay friends with. In "The Sunscreen Song", there is a line that goes, "Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young." Good advice in time and place.

Is this a choice that I have just come to make inadvertently? Perhaps. I do know however that there is no going back when it comes to this life decision.

So where am I exactly? When I think about where I most call 'home', ironically it would be a 43% chance that I would call it the place that I am in currently. Most possibly I would miss the bicycle rides to the Museum of Modern Art, tram rides from Queen Vic market with a bunch of bananas and a backpack of groceries for the week. I would miss lounging in the sun with a latte in one hand, book in the other, leaning against the shoulder of a someone-who-was-never-there. I would miss the gentle cold in the winters, clubbing at Salt until 4am in the morning, walks along the Yarra river, the nostalgia of finding a childhood candy at the Chinese provision shop. Would I ever be able to call that home? Maybe. With 47% certainty. But would that missing 10% made up of the many other places still bug me when I wake up in the middle of the night? Yes. Oh, hell, Yes.