Sunday, June 15, 2008

My angel


My best friend moved into NJ with her husband due to his job transfer last April. She is my only longest friend…like 2 decades. I met her when we were high school students and we started hanging out when we were college students. We were and are really different: When I say, "black," she will say "white." That different. While I'm a very complicated and difficult person, she is a very straightforward one. In my college days, I was on the dark side of the moon. Well, since I was 6 years old, I say. I was depressed and always faking myself. I didn’t really exist in the world. I was just living. I didn’t trust and accept neither myself nor anybody in the world. I thought nobody liked me, as I didn’t like myself anyway. So, I never had a single real friend along the way until I'd met this girl, who was on the other side of the shore in life. Of course, it took me for a while to break my hardened heart to her. We just hanged out and had fun together, like I did with other people. We laughed a lot, but still I didn’t trust her, though I really enjoyed being with her, though I really liked her, her honesty, sense of humor and the fact that she didn’t seem to know about “darkness in life.” but I never expected her to like me as much as I did. At one point, I could not live any longer unless I did something to save myself. Really I fell apart seriously. So, I decided to participate into kind of a cult institution/"let's-help-yourself! You-belong-to-the-world.' kinda place. I was so despair that this looked like the only option that I had. So, I was really into it and completed all the courses, which were 4 levels. (I could talk about this, but not here.) So, I stopped seeing her and then one day, she asked me out for lunch. We went to a typical lunch place where everybody had to share the table and leave once he's done. We were in the middle of the table with a bunch of businessman. "We don’t see each other at all and I'm sad," she started crying. I almost choked. “I was busy with this institution…” and then started crying as well. First of all, our conversation was something like a couple could conduct; yet in the middle of the day and in the middle of businessman just swallowing food. (We were young after all?) Yet, I was surprised about the fact there was somebody in this world who could cry for me…cry for not being able to see me enough. I was saved. Absolutely. As a person who could never open her heart despite her wish for opening up, as a person who was suffocating for love, as a person who was completely lonely, this was like a bomb. I never forgot this moment, though she herself didn’t remember this…well, that’s her…. what can I say? Since that day, she became my angel, my first real friend and my longest friend who knew everything about me, good and bad yet accepted the whole me without saying cheesy words, yet through her honesty and action. After a while, we parted each other here and there, as I was the one who wondered around, moving around. She was more pursuing a normal and solid life. Yet, she was always there for me after coming back one journey after another. Just knowing that she exists has been bringing me strength.
After my move to NY, she got married. I could not attend the wedding. Only once a year or 2 years, we saw each other during my trip to Japan. Still we laughed together. We were the same like when we were college students. Then, now, she is so close to me with another life in her stomach. I can’t be happier. After all, I will be able to be there for her biggest day, bringing a new life. For the first time, I will be there for her like she has been always there for me.