Post-School Friending

So, I have this friend (seriously, I have got to stop starting blog posts like that).

He's...we've been friends for quite a long time really, considering we've known each other since circa year 7, and while we don't have heaps of stuff in common we have perhaps one of the most important things to either of us in common, especially when we were in high school: French.

He went away to France after school (like literally straight after, the weekend after our last exam he was on a plane, destination Charles de Gaulle) and I think he lost touch with a lot of people while he was away because that's a crucial period.
The first 6-12 months after school finishes is vital, especially once people start at uni/TAFE/work/etc. You realise who you miss, who you like, who you want to spend time with, and, more importantly perhaps, who you don't.

When he came back, he struggled. He'd missed 8 months of his friends' lives here when we'd been stressed about results, acceptances, the scary world of uni, losing touch with our old friends as well as the fact he came back from an amazing and terrifying stay abroad (I really want to use the word voyage because moving to foreign country at age 18 while undeniably beneficial would've been scary as fuck).

We weren't exceptionally close in high school, nor are we now. We've spoken on and off since he got back, over text and Facebook. I'm...cautious about really taking this friendship seriously because we've had some crazy ups and downs since school finished, not to mention our unstable friendship during school. He's the kind of guy who wanted so desperately to be a "cool kid" he'd ditch you the second one of them paid him any attention. I'd like to think he's matured from his time in France and his return but sometimes he seems more talk than walk. He's not a bad guy, he's intelligent and blunt in a way that makes me believe we're better friends than I think (though it has lead to disagreements) and he's ambitious. None of these are bad qualities in either a friend or a person in general. I like that we can talk about relationships in the same thread as talking about nuclear weaponry or the beauty of bilingualism. I like talking to him because we don't always talk about people. Most of the time we do but sometimes we talk about languages or international politics or history and it's really nice to have intelligent conversations and share knowledge that's more than who slept with who. Not that he's the only person I can have intelligent conversations with but I feel like a higher proportion of our conversations are intelligent than those I have with other people. I love to talk about books, movies, tv shows, whatever but learning things by talking to someone else is fascinating.