Of stress and friends and missing

Stress -
While the adrenaline running through my system right now would beg to differ, I am not usually a stressed sort of person. This week, however, besides being sick, missing hours of work, and doing three applications at once, I am also dealing with a ridiculous landlady who just will not see reason. And thus, I am stressed. And I just sent her an email, so at the moment I am shaking mildly and occasionally bursting out into giggles and finding it hard to type. However, I found an amazing way to calm down: discuss random fruits with a very good friend.

Friends -
At the same time physical distance is adding to emotional distance in some of my relationships, in others it is strengthening what could have been considered a tenuous relationship at the time I left RIT. That is something for which I am truly grateful. I am also getting to know people I thought I had left behind here, and I'm glad for that as well. There was this one kid in high school who dated my best friend for ages. We never really got along well, mostly because I had a crush on him before they dated and it was difficult for me to get over. Now though, we're great friends. He came back to visit this weekend, and even though I only got to see him for half an hour, it was the best half hour of my day. Well, besides when I was eating that passionfruit sorbet, which, by the way Molly, is vegan and you would LOVE.

Missing -
Learning who my true friends are has also redefined the sensation of missing. It is much less like the traditional missing as we know it in English, and much more like the Portuguese concept of saudade.
I had a friend from Portugal who wrote me the most amazing stories. He wrote this one about how I traveled to another planet and saved the world from war and was this amazing and wonderful human being, about the person he saw inside of me, which made me cry by the end. However the one that will always stick with me is Saudade, about a captain's wife left behind when her husband leaves for sea, and the longing she feels for him. Because saudade is not just missing, but constantly longing for either the future or a past experience which you know can never actually happen. It's this terrible longing for something that does not quite exist, and most likely never will.

I long. I yearn. I want things to be back the way they were, and I want to be with my friends. I know this isn't going to happen anytime soon, and I know that even when I come back to visit everything will be different, but at the same time I long for things to be the way they were.

Is there really anything to be scared of?
Only the night.
The kind in armor?
The kind that comes when day is done.