my friend

my friend. my lost friend. a friend i have not met for 20 years. a friend that i am sure i will not recognise if i bump into on the streets (at this point hubby will usually add that i will not recognise anybody i have met 5 minutes ago either)

some asked me how i still remembered her name (being totally familiar with my cheese-holed amnesiac brain) some asked why her, and not others. everybody asked how i manage to find her after all these years.

her name is easy enough, unique it will seem in the small island south of here. i have forgotten many things but her name comes quickly to mind. i did not, repeat, did not cheat by looking at the many letters and cards that i have kept from eons ago. :-p locating her was simple. maybe it was fate. she worked in a government agency, which makes searching for her name on google all the more prominent; her name was the top search result. as for why her, it's a little harder to explain. perhaps it was because i remembered how comfortable she made me feel. perhaps it was her letters; the sincerity, the love, the closeness between the lines. the letters that i hold dearest in my little memory box are not those that dripped with sacharrin sweetness or casual friendliness. rather, they are those that are filled with witty sarcasm and blatant name-calling, all aimed at my passiveness in replying and sometimes, nothing more than an affectionate term of endearment. (when has 'bitch' become a synonym for affection? when you know the mouth that speaks it is filled with love for you). criticicm that only a real friend will dare make.

excitement caught up with me soon enough. but perhaps more conspicuously is the absence of pressure; will i still like her? will she think i have changed? will she be the same? can we be as close as before? do i look good enough for first impressions all over again? all those questions were strangely silent. it didn't matter. nothing mattered. for this ms. worrywart, that perhaps is record-breaking. perhaps she was more worried than i am, reminding me many times that she has gained more weight during the years than she should. my reply - i don't think kilograms will affect a friendship.

to hug or not to hug? the conservative and the forever planning-in-advance me contemplated that as we drove up to the hotel lobby. but the moment i saw her, instinct took over. i could not not hug her. it doesn't matter if we are not going to be as close now, it doesn't matter if she looks different. perhaps moments like these are not meant to be broken down into split-second scenes and analysed frame by frame. it is meant to be embraced whole-heartedly with all your emotions revealed and pores acknowledging.

we ate lunch. we shopped. we met up again for christmas eve dinner.

the ackward silent scenes were not written into the script. neither were the 'so-close-again-like-time-never-tore-us-apart' pictures. it was a comfortable, slow-paced reunion. we didn't try to be each other's best friend again at the blink of an eye, demanding that all be restored by the powers that be instantaneously. but by dinner the next night, eventhough we haven't cut our fingers and dripped our blood together into a bowl in sworn sisterhood, we remembered how good our friendship felt. we remembered the closeness and the love shared. and i remembered why she was my best friend. her sincerity was still there. her straight-forwardness. she call it her gullibility. i call it her trusting nature.

i didn't find a new best friend overnight. i wish i had more to give of myself, from before i am cynical and hard, distrusting and cautious. i would have, could have been a better friend to her. i would have loved unreservedly, trusted flagrantly and laughed candidly. in the end, it did feel like the years did not diminish our friendship, but i felt strangely sad that i have not played a more active role in her life passed. i felt sad that i had less to give her now of myself.

still, we are beginning a new board game. all pieces start afresh. it's the here and now that matters. she may not be my closest and dearest from this moment on. or she may be. que sera sera. nobody knows the future. one lesson i am reminded; how to be a friend. a little tolerance and a little giving, something i don't find myself doing for a long time.