I was looking through my phone gallery and noticed that it’s almost entirely made up of conversations I’ve had with other people. Pictures of trees, frogs, sunsets and birds; exchanged with one of my best friends who’s as enthusiastic about wildlife as I am. Hurried voice notes from a friend who’s always multi-tasking, someone I can only manage to have a real-time conversation with once in a few months. Videos of another friend singing to music in the car: the harmony parts he knows I’d sing along to. Silly memes, cute GIFs and carefully cropped snippets from articles. All of these form the language of intimacy; private conversations that have found their pace and footing and ease. I’m thinking of you, they say. Pockets of connection packaged into the little space and time that our everyday lives allow.

I first learned intimacy through observation, which helped me develop close relationships with places. As a child, I loved having secrets. I’d notice something strange or beautiful and that observation always seemed like this exclusive thing that only I could carry. I felt closer to the thing if I didn’t disclose it to anyone. I knew where the touch-me-nots in the badminton court were (and I wasn’t going to show anyone else). I knew the lantana bush growing outside the building where I had dance lessons: I’d watch black ants crawl in and out of their yellow flowers. I knew the screech of the parakeets as they flew past my window in the evenings. I loved feeling like I was witness to secrets that the universe showed me.

I’ve craved intimacy with people in the same way: by being witness to their secrets, by really knowing them and being known. By finding those delicious surprises and touch-me-nots.

In my 20s, intimacy stemmed from the luxury of time and consistency. Knowing someone deeply typically involved having enough time with them to dig deeper and face a variety of situations together that helped you form some understanding of who they were and how much benefit of the doubt you might give them. (The benefit of the doubt is super important to me in a relationship – but that’s a whole different story.) During my university days, time was an unlimited thing that stretched and expanded into as much of it as you wanted. It was pliable, something you could mould and control. Conversations spanned days and nights, coffees became lunches and dinners, walks were wild and unstructured. I saw the same set of people regularly, we went to class together, met during breaks, shared rooms, climbed hills and sat under trees and were in no hurry to do anything or get anywhere. When I was with them, I presented all of myself, without thought or doubt. And when I wasn’t with them, I daydreamed about them. Intimacy then was easy to access: it lived in these shared lives, in this shared space and time.

But as adults, time shrinks, offering little give. You accumulate more and more stories and experiences, moments of joy and sadness, discover things about yourself that surprise you. But ironically there seems to be less time to share all of it with someone. Lives become more insular and busier. Also, with everyone going through different circumstances, conversations are now more careful, taking into account that we might have no idea what the other person may be going through. I tiptoe so much now.

We have a tiny window of time to sustain old relationships and an even tinier window through which to build new ones. I no longer have hundreds of hours to spend at leisure with someone, or the circumstances that allow me to see them through different phases of life closely. Access to another person’s world is fleeting and seems to happen in sudden impulsive outbursts or as quiet comments exchanged in a crowded room.

I’m currently grieving the loss of a friendship: possibly the relationship I’ve been the most vulnerable and transparent in. As I’ve watched our conversations get strained and quieter — go from everything to drip-feed —  it’s forced me to look at reframing what connection and closeness really means. And how, no matter how much you love someone, it also is dependent on the tenderness, time, and honesty two people can afford at that time.

I’ve had a lifelong complex about not really being understood – and I have this desperate need to connect with people. A need that is so embarrassingly generic – but one which has taken multiple rounds of therapy to identify and admit to. I’ve craved intimacy with an intensity and ferocity and urgency that has often taken me by surprise and has needed careful management so as to appear ‘normal’.

Now, within the limitations of adulthood, I’m finding ways to cultivate the spaces that allow me to chase that feeling.

One way I’ve learned to do it is to pay attention. Just by looking and listening, I’ve discovered the most beautiful things about the natural world. Perhaps the same applies to people. When you listen, you can focus on one thing or person and drown out everything else. You can hear and feel nuance. I hear the catch in my friend’s throat as he speaks about his family and I know something’s wrong. I want to make the pain go away or ask for more, but I can’t do either, so I listen. I give him extra attention, focus when he speaks, and remember to ask how he’s doing. I have no idea if any of it makes a difference but it makes me feel close: helps me find the language to say I care about you.

The easiest and quickest route for me to intimacy is finding that we speak the same language. OMG, you like that song too?! Or, did you also notice Saturn in the sky last night? I am a child again as I get busy making playlists, sharing pictures of trees and having imaginary conversations with the object of my affection. It’s this language of romance that I turn to over and over again: evidence that we’re alive, and notice the same thing. I lay more and more of myself for them to see.

And that’s something that’s hard to do too. Allowing someone that access: letting them see me. As someone fairly shy, I’m surprised at how ‘themselves’ some people can be: never feeling the need to overcompensate, or say everything’s all right when it’s not. I’m touched when someone is completely unpretentious with me, and I feel privileged to witness that. Maybe by covering myself up, I deprive people of a fair opportunity to know me. I have no problem at all baring my soul through my comics and writing to the world, but I am careful with the people closest to me – perhaps the relationships that need most protection.

Recently, I shared a personal story with someone at work. They spent an hour with me, talking through their own similar story… something in them reaching out to something in me. We might never see each other again but a forever bond was formed. We’re both unlikely to forget that conversation.

Like many of us, I have one-to-one relationships with people that nobody else has visibility of. The colleague I regularly sit with for lunch, with whom I often ending up sharing food. The friend with whom I have a 96% Spotify Blend match. The falafel man who grins at me and announces my order before I can, falafel, hummus, no salad. My long-suffering partner who knows what I mean even when I use words that say the opposite. These familiarities form private worlds between two people, not shared with anyone else. Secrets.

I visited a friend earlier this year after more than a decade, looking to reconnect, a bit nervous about the long gap. We’d grown up together, inseparable as teenagers. When her partner hurriedly started to clean the room I was going to sleep in, she said to him, “Arrey chill, she’s family.” I welled up.

A big highlight from recent months was when a friend played his favourite songs for me while I was in the shower. Intimacy is, “You have to listen to this!” It takes so little – a song, a shared something – to feel alive. I hang on to these moments. They convert that ache for connection into an explosion of joy. Intimacy is a postcard, a beating Whatsapp heart, an inside joke, a three-day in-person conversation, a quick catchup over coffee, a phone call asking for a recipe, a care package, a ‘miss you’, a long rant, acknowledgement, silence, laughter.

Recently while out with a group, I noticed that a new friend who was sitting at the end of the table made a joke and casually looked over at me to see if I was laughing. I could isolate that as my singular high from the year: my heart melted. I recognised that expression, that expectation of “Did you get it? I know you would!”

Maybe intimacy is hope. Of reaching across the room to see if someone mirrors your feelings. If someone gets you. And the truth is, you don’t need to know someone to get them.

I caught my friend’s eye. Of course I was laughing.