Farewell, friends…
To my (disappearing) childhood friends
Trust you are well. I miss you. Dearly. Desperately.
Like the times when my high-school sweetheart walked away from me because he had no feelings anymore – and I desperately wanted him to be back? But also I was unwilling to ask for it, for how could I force someone to want me? To like me?
Like that. Remember?
I miss you like that.
By the way, he’s married now. I even attended his wedding as a genuine well wisher. I was not part of the picture, but blessed to be the camera that captures. A backdrop at best. I’m happy for him – and although sometimes I wonder how life would be if things had worked out between us, I’m not sure if I would want to risk whatever I have for what could be. I’m happy with how things are.
Yes, me. The one who used to be triggered with the phrase “move on”, has finally moved on.
I guess I might be able to reach that stage with you, too.
You know….
I thought that I was born with self-sufficiency. I wore the badge of independence proudly back then.
Alas, adulthood slithered through – striking me in my obliviousness, imbuing poison into my resilience. Adulthood gushed through the steel of my altruism, gradually rusting it. I became demanding for my tank is now running empty. I conserve what’s remaining as my innocence falters – It turns out that independence was an illusion, and I desperately wanted to lean.
I gulped on faith and religion to fill-up my emotional tank as much as I could. As much as I know how to. As much as this flawed, inconsistent, forgetful servant of Him could. The thing is, I know what I could fill the tank with. But sometimes the nearest faith station is miles away and the engine screeches to a halt in a middle of nowhere in the darkest hour. So sometimes, I need someone to push the car with me – at least to the nearest lamppost.
What I realised now is that I was (maybe still am?) not able to seek help without being prickly with my vulnerability. When I asked you to push the car with me, not to sign off by telling me where the station is because FYI, I DO KNOW WHERE THE STATION IS, I was waved off.
Perhaps, the echo of my empty tank is deafening. See all caps there? Maybe, I couldn’t reach out in a humble way. Maybe. I wanted a shoulder to cry on but I didn’t know how to appropriately reach out. I still don’t know how to.
Or maybe I am subconsciously defensive. Nobody wanted to be toxic, nobody wanted to be a villain. Maybe I am entrapped in denial.
So, I was hurt. I pushed my car alone, stringing some melancholic poetry to get the wheels rolling. In doing so, I was absent – drowning in the world of my own making, within which the clock of the reality does not tick. Again.
For I tend to do this A LOT. I think more, and live less.
In resenting you as a friend who wasn’t willing to sit through the storm with me, I too had been the very same, if not worst. I was absent when you needed me. That should have been an eye opener. I should have healed. I should have stopped resenting.
But, no – by then, I’ve gathered enough courage to reach out to the next friend. And next. And next.
To you, all the friends I reached out to,
I apologise for wanting more than what I have given. It was my mistake that I was experimenting with being less reserved, more accessible, less mysterious, a little more readable. I thought attempts alone would bring me one step closer towards being more normal –
But unfortunately, these would only work when you have a garden within which people could walk in and marvel at – pluck the flowers and distil perfume out of the petals. Opening up is dangerous when you’re deep down monstrous. It’s akin to unleashing a beast, an energy-sucking vampire. All I had then were mere complains. I was throwing a pity party that nobody wanted to be at.
Note: In my defence, these are just phases – I am never permanently in state of dissatisfaction. I wonder how – that all I have said suffices for you to deduce the sort of person I am, but not enough to comprehend the state I was in. But again, everything that has happened and things that were said to me this year alone have made me question my belief about myself. I wonder if I’ve been stringing facts into a self-serving tale – thinking of myself as Cinderella, when in reality, I resemble the shady step sister? So yes, perhaps – you are right. I might be constantly bitter, and it runs in the background like a dodgy apps, subtly sucking the battery life. Or perhaps my lament is too violent of an eruption, too turbulent of a tornado – that you couldn’t help but to run away from. Either way….
I am sincerely sorry for offloading the mess I am in upon your shoulders. I’m used to be a sanctuary to whom people be vulnerable to and I wear their scars like badges of honour; after all, these symbolises their trust on me. Such thinking would often erase, (even if sometimes just partially) whatever mental burden that I suffer as a result of being an emotional dumpster. I genuinely thought I would also flaunt my wounds to you as a sign that I wholeheartedly trust our friendship.
I didn’t know that my feelings were accusatory. I didn’t know I would be triggering through my words when all I want is for someone to understand that I am not at my best – enough to not take that version for what I am, and create an unbridgeable distance with the entirety of me.
I should have known.
I could never blame you for feeling the way you do. I understand the heave thrusted upon one’s heart for having to do the weightlifting of the emotional burden of someone else’s. I know how it feels like to be the bowl where people flush down their emotional diarrhea. I could understand the reluctance.
I wish we could patch up, but unfortunately, I could expertly swallow, yet, could rarely digest and expel. Perhaps, my hollow rituals underlie my excessive swallowing – things are neither digested nor expelled and hence, disgusting filth lingers within me. Sometimes it gets too much that it just seeps through my skin. Ugly. Raw. Toxic. I do not want to stain your white robes with my ugly resentment anymore.
I wonder, even as I desperately wish I could turn back time – shall we preserve what no longer is? Because after all, friendship does not work like antiques. The number of years does not signify value. It’s a myth. Old isn’t necessarily gold.
I’m rusty, and you’re a collector. Whatever between us is no longer a friendship – and I’m unworthy even as a mere artefact. Shall we preserve what no longer is?
I know that whatever that would be holding our friendship in the future are just the ghosts of the good times we had back then, when final exams were the biggest source of distress. I might not be the person you would want to befriend if we have met later in life.
I might resemble that one annoying aunty in the family that everyone tolerates just to protect kinship and I don’t want to play that role, even if I fits into it perfectly. So perhaps for now, I would happily dissolves into the backdrop.
It has worked before.
Yours, truly…
