Girlfriends

My last two posts were the least popular of all my posts. I wonder if the reasons are the subjects or my dilettante Shakespearean reviews. In fact, this is not that important even if, as most of the bloggers, I write with hope for a feedback. I also write for myself especially in those days. I have a number of things to sort out and as my life situation has changed. I am reviewing my values so they are relevant to the current times. I always wanted to live well and I always wanted my life to be meaningful. Even more so now. Hence heavier subjects of my posts and at times confusion in writing that comes with the search for meaning and the lost time.

I also need some escape from obsessive thinking of things that I have to face. The books that re-tell Shakespeare are a good source of material helping me with it. Recently I came across a new great escape tool so I will give Shakespeare a short rest. The new tool is even more fun, less demanding intellectually and gives me food for thought. Perfect!  It does not have to be Shakespeare to make me think of life and its values. The old Polish serial Girlfriends can be also very valuable! It is not that old really, but old enough for the system to let me view it even if I am in a geographical zone that does not have privileges to watch all that one can watch in Poland. The story is set in this century and the girls are 35 when the serial starts. They are older than I was when I left Poland and my Polish girlfriends. Still a lot of the serial story reminds me of the old times, old problems and old friendships.

                                          

There is a saying that I come across.

Friends can cross our path

v  For a reason

v  For a season or

v  Stay for life.

The girlfriends from the serial are friends for life. Such friends are most difficult to find. And keep.

I was lucky and unlucky with respect to my friends for life. At school there were four of us. We walked together home from school, leaving the company one by one to go home as we went along. My home was the second last and it gave me an opportunity to be the part of all sharing between us. The friendships lasted beyond the school times. We all went to big towns to study. I went to Warsaw and two others as well but we did not see each other much except for school holidays when we went back home. But we kept in touch for some time. The girl who I felt the closest to, Ala, became a dentist, married and had two girls, twins. She died suddenly when she was 27. The other one disappeared from the scene in a strange way. I tried to contact her several times but never managed. There were gossips that she had some mental problems. Maybe some kind of an asylum was the place she landed up at and the family did not want anyone to know? The fourth one of us, I hope, is well and happy, but we did not have much in common to start with so the friendship fizzled out naturally. So, I do not have any friends from the school times.

Then there was my Uni and Warsaw time. I met Basia the first day at Uni.  I did not know anyone there and was rather shy those days. I had no idea how to behave and what to do with myself. Then I saw a girl in a neat gray suit. She was pretty and looked friendly. We looked at each other, smiled at each other and became fast friends from the first sight. Then the next girl, Wanda, game along and we were three. It really was the kernel of my friendship group and it looked that it will be one of this friendships for life. In a way it has been, even if perhaps it could not have last in the form my idealistic, perhaps silly soul needed. The matter of memories is something I still struggle with but I like to think that sometimes memories may represent the current reality as well as the past. Isosteric concept, I know, but I like it. Maybe I need it? So many people have left my life one way or another and I miss them. Memories are the best I can have. Wow, this is getting much too heavy, but the matter of friendship, its demands and needs has been a lot on my mind lately. The serial has something do with it. But not only.

The three of us, even if we all got our masters of mathematics diplomas, organized our lives very differently. I was searching for love and meaning and that meant frequent changes, disappointments, exciting career and many moments of happiness followed by the opposite.   I am now settled to life of an independent, single woman after three happy (at least for some time) marriages. My girlfriends are still happy, or not, with the husbands they chose in the young years. In a way I envy them or rather I am happy that they have supporting companions of many years in their lives. We made different choices. But this is a subject for another reminiscing writing.

I am very grateful for experiencing those long friendships that were based on trust, mutual affection and loads of good memories. One of those old friends is still my life line and I feel very privileged and lucky that she is in my life. Watching the serial, I have realized that at times old girlfriends play a role of mothers in their unselfish way to assists in challenges that come across. I still have one such friend and that makes me feel lucky.