Once you see it
It’s rare I find the time to make it to a party these days. I’m in my mid 20s and work is gruelling. I’m a strategy consultant in a big firm. I keep getting the word “mature” on my performance appraisals, but I half draw a blank at why people see me this way.
It’s early evening and it’s still light out as I reach the front gate of a friend’s house in suburban Sydney. I haven’t been here before. The front gate is ajar. A wave of trepidation passes over me as I step though the front gate, try to close it and realise it’s stuck open. I catch the sense of it being my fault. Then a second later, the recognition that it was already stuck. I couldn’t have broken it.
I take a breath and walk beyond the gate.
The uneasiness fades as I walk down the path towards the front door of the house. It’s dimly light around the door. It feels darker as I step under the awning onto the porch. I stand at the door, for a moment.
It feels like it’s the first time I’ve seen these friends in a long time. A lot has happened since we last met.
My partner and I broke-up a few months ago and the wounds are still fresh. I opted out of contact with our mutual friends when the relationship ended. It was like I gave up the connections to my x. I’d been friends with many of these people for years. It was painful. But the relationship was intense and so was being in the same space. Tonight, it’s a mutual friend’s party.
“Hello”, I yell through the front door. The music is too loud and no one is in sight. I step inside the doorway.
I am walking down a long corridor that is dimly lite and seems to keep going, and going, past one closed door, then another closed door and another. Then it opens up into a living room that rolls out onto a kitchen. I look on. People are mingling and chatting in small groups. You can feel the eagerness of a 20-30 something party – people wanting to cluster together into a single mass, in tension with the pre-party, socially awkward inertia. I look on, until I melt inside.
I am like a wounded animal hobbling back to it’s flock. There is a scent of blood on me. And the risk the flock may have been infiltrated with jackals waiting to attack.
I see Angela talking with a few people. She is a friend who’s really more of a friend of a friend. She has a way about her that blossoms like a lone flower standing in a field. Angela has long wavy hair that does it’s own thing, is taller than most women and has a sturdier frame. She has her roots in community development and works in allied health. My partner left for an overseas trip with Angela and came back my x. But, I’ve liked Angela, since I met her.
I walk over and join the conversation. It’s a friendly flock.
Some people drop off the conversation and then Angela takes a moment to tell me about where she’s just got back from: a meditation. I feel the resonance immediately. A sense of familiar, a feeling I’d felt before.
We talk for a while intently, but it’s the fullness that is conveyed, rather than the words that are spoken. The resonance subsides and our conversation tilts back to daily life. We cover all the ground and then our conversation ends naturally.
I try to mingle. Time passes. Then, I look around the party from the outside again and I decide there is really no point.
I gather my courage. I put one foot in front of the other and walk over to my x. She and some old friends are talking together. We say hello and I ask pleasantly, “How are you?”. After a moment, she quickly turns back to the group. I feel the group whirlpool and I don’t want to join in. I say goodbye.
I walk out the long dark corridor, down the path, out the open gate and leave the party. I jump in a cab I called before I left, that’s waiting for me outside. I give the driver my address. We pull away.
As the suburbs roll on one after another I see a vivid image of my x partner’s face, having a good time but rather brashly. I see an even more vivid image of an old friend’s face, who has literally stuck his head into the centre of the group conversation, playing the jester. They are doing the same things they’ve always done. I think of the same people, doing the same things and looking like they are having a good time. But it’s doesn’t feel true.
I remember the long, dark corridor. I remember the trepidation at the gate. I remember the feeling I’d done something wrong, like it was my fault. I remember the resonance, a sense of familiarity, a feeling I’d felt before.
The cab arrives in my leafy street in an inner Sydney suburb. We stop out the front of my place. I pay the driver and I jump out of the cab. I walk through the front gate towards the door. I open the security door and unlock the wooden door. I step inside my townhouse for one. The sense of familiarity is with me, as I settle in for an early night’s sleep on a Saturday night.
Snapshot
Reality exists at gross, subtle and causal levels