Hoodies, CDs and Friends by @SW16_Moriarty

By James Morgan One of things that inevitably happens during a relationship is the sharing of stuff. Typically thisincludes clothes (mostly my jumpers I’ve found), money, music, food and a bunch of other bits andpieces. In general I’d say this is a good thing as it creates a unity between the two parts; suddenlyyou are a team with shared possessions as well as goals and dreams, not just two people having sex.Of course there is the issue of what to do when the relationship ends, but this isn’t always thattroublesome and can frequently be solved by a brief and uncomfortable meeting in a coffee shop,with a few bags getting passed over a cheap espresso and the odd dry muffin. However, there are times when it can be much more complicated. I spent the majority of my time at university in a relationship with a girl I was truly in love with, andnaturally we spent a large amount of time together. As well as doing half of the same degree as eachother, we had a lot of shared interests and as a result a huge number of mutual friends and peoplethat we had met at the same time, so it became slightly convoluted as to who was whose friend, andwho “belonged” to the other. At the time this was perfect, as it meant the standard issues of whosecrowd do we go out with tonight, or which friends do we need to spend more time with simplydidn’t exist. Sure, on top of all this, she ended up hoarding about five or six of my big hoodies andcardigans, but that was hardly a problem (they always came back smelling super great!)When things inevitably ended, it was incredibly messy and a pretty horrible period of both of ourlives, and after an elongated returning of stuff, the more complicated issue arose – who gets the kidsin the divorce? Having studied the same degree, most of our course friends were entirely mutual, as well as a bunchof others who we knew as a couple, so it wasn’t overly clear what to do. I’m not entirely sure how ithappened, but we kind of just split them down the middle in a way, and that was that. Some peoplewho I had shared hundreds of experiences with through my late teenage years were gone from mylife like a snap. Aas neither me nor my ex could be in the same room as each other, and with thenever ending bitching coming from both sides, no one could bare to spend time with both of us. Itperhaps wasn’t the only option we had, but with things as they were, and all the other poison in ourlives at the time, it’s simply how it was, and that was that. This morning I found myself nipping into Oxford Street to get some last minute supplies beforecoming back to the studio tomorrow, and decided to look through my phone book and see if anyonewas in the area or wanted a coffee. I came across a name I haven’t thought about in around four orfive years, a guy that was one of my closest friends in the first two years of university, but for the lastterm I was essentially “not allowed to talk to”. We hadn’t spoken since. Perhaps I was hurt that he had taken the side of the woman who had cheated all over me, orperhaps it was simply I didn’t want to be reminded of the period of my life where I am genuinelyashamed of how I behaved. It’s hard to say. However I thought about the fact that I have recently been in lose communication with my devilwoman (every man has one, trust me) and things are pretty civil between us now and decided tobrush off my prior feelings and gave him a call. We’re getting coffee next week.