Strangers turning into friends
Watching as strangers gradually turn into friends – it’s becoming one of my absolute favorite things about life.
That very first encounter, as each person puts effort into trying to leave a nice, warm first impression, with smiles shyly filling almost every part of the conversation. The finding-it-hard-to-maintain-eye-contact part. The “how about you?” questions that start to follow every awkward silence, as each person tries to paint a picture for the other in their mind. The going-back-home-recalling-the-few-words-you-shared and the continuous looking-forward-to-more.
Then there’s the sudden (yet gradual) emergence of the “how did we get here?” feeling, while literally hearing every piece of ice break. When you start to share more intimate conversations, and both your minds get more in control of coloring in the remaining empty parts of your paintings. Even better, when you realize you should completely put that old painting aside and start a brand new one, with the little details you’re getting to learn/notice about them every day. When your eyes get to meet more often, more comfortably, and you start to really see through one another.
It doesn’t just stop there. You slowly start feeling comfortable around them. You slowly start sharing (real) pieces of yourself with them. And you slowly start picking up words they say or gestures they do, that you don’t even realize are unconsciously being passed on to you. The endless series of your inside jokes start making it to life, and you start surprising yourself by every loud (and weird) laugh you let out together as you no longer seem to pay attention to wrong impressions or misjudgments from either side. And one day, you look at them, and you start seeing pieces of you all over them too. You continue to recall your very first encounters, when you finally happen to watch them as they meet another someone for the very first time, and the whole journey starts all over again.
Yet this time, you would’ve already been exposed to their “backstage” and you’d know what really lies behind their every smile and every detail they share. It will feel weird, realizing that someone’s still getting around to meeting one of their many outer layers – while you’ve already made it to the inside. Getting to watch more paintings of them coming to life will sound beautiful. Yet still, deep down, you’ll always know they’re all nowhere near your very own masterpiece.
