A split second ago, I thought about this song. I think my friend Camille sent it to me when we were in high school.
Lately, I’ve been going through the most drastic friendship changes. My life feels uprooted in some ways, it’s not bad though. Not that it wasn’t ever the case, considering I moved around so much as a child, but even more so now. How am I so still in this place, yet constantly being shuffled around, thrown upside down?
I remember writing in my college essay about the joys of living in between worlds, cultures, communities, ect. To be very honest, it actually sucks. I presented myself as an adaptable applicant, because I was. When you have to move 8 different times before you turn 18, you kind of have to just take what you can get. I was always so envious of my friends who had childhood best friends especially in America. They would say something like, I’ve know John Doe since I was 6! I thought to myself, damn, I just got here two years ago. How will I ever compete with a friendship of a lifetime?
In that way, as a teenager, I did not adhere to rules of the BFF trope. I told myself I have no best friends, because they are already best friends with someone else. If they already have a #1, why would I even matter? My naivety would land me to be close to many people, but never calling them my best friend, because I felt that they would not regard me in the same way. To this day, I don’t know how they felt about me.
I don’t think there’s ever a point to any of my tangents, but this is a blog for a reason. I’m spitting things out and not digesting a lot of it.
Sey moved to San Jose, and I grieved them leaving months before they even began packing. I couldn’t imagine my life without them because we’ve been side to side since July of 2021. So in some ways, I hated New York. I hated that they want to move to New York. I hate that New York is taking them away from me. That’s my baby. I finally got over it at some magical point. I went to New York, and I got it. The fast paced big apple big dog of it all. I had to go through the five stages of grief as if they passed away. They are still alive and well, just that they live in San Jose now. They deserve every single chance to make a grand path of their own, and they will. And that they will blossom, and I will be here to witness every single part of that transformation. And I am happy to have arrived there.
Also, I did reconnect with my kindergarten best friend. There is a photo of us playing together at 5 years old. Thank God my mom’s an internet queen because she kept in contact with her mom after all these years. We hung out for the first time again in 2019, after 12 years or something, airing out our similar grievances about mothers who were harsh on their daughters, or emotionally unavailable boys all around the world. A few years later, we video called in 2024, and she was smoking the same cigarette as me. She was also going to art school and entertaining her many lovers. What are the freaking odds that we are the exact same, on opposite sides of the world, raised on completely different ideologies. Life is beautifully, coincidentally happening in that way. 🙂
I don’t feel so scared of the wax/wean of friendships anymore. I will kick it with a rock if it had something significant to say. Many people know that about me, and I feel self conscious when my friends are in the car with me while I’m having the time of my life with our Uber driver. At the end of the day, I don’t care all that much about judgement or having couth because I love learning about random people. It bites me in the ass sometimes, so I’m working on it.
So many relationships in the past few months and years have faltered, but whatever, that’s the nature of the human pace. People will move away, fuck up, crash out and I will have to be fine with it. I will hold those who are in physical proximity to me tightly and the angels in my phone tighter too. That is the great and also fucked up thing about this age and time. I will see you, whether I like it or not, whether I want it or not. I will do just that, to the best of my abilities, considering I have the attention of a goldfish, maybe less.
Everything is shit except my friendship with you. It’s always felt like that. When it rains, it pours. And when it pours, I always had you. And just so you know, and I hope you do, you have me too, always.
XOXO
CGFOTY
shari wei 