At every age, I had a good friend, someone to share dreams and laughters with and fight against the inevitable sadness we encounter in life. I still have them, but they are spread around the world, they dream, they laugh and come across that inevitable sadness on some paths that I do not walk on anymore. I miss them sometimes, when I let my thoughts travel. Those are deep relationships that require time to build. I miss their uniqueness because the good moments we had are unrepeatable in time and space. I miss them and it saddens me because if there is one thing we cannot have in life, that is permanence.
From every relationship, we end up with a bit of sadness. It's inevitable. There are friends who stay, friends who depart and friends who betray. And from the last two types, maybe the only constant is the sensation that our hearts are inconsolable. But that is just the illusion of permanence. Nothing stays for ever, not even a heartbreak. I talk about friends, but I refer to lovers as well because for me, a lover is first of all a friend. If we cannot be friends at first, we cannot be really lovers.
In middle school, I had a very close friend, we used to go to the library together and leave the shelves deserted after filling our backpacks with food for the soul. We used to go to the malls together for random strolls. And I remember one of the greatest delights was the short moment I spent with her in the cafeteria when we both took a last sip of our coke knowing that we had to rush but still thinking that it will be so proper if this middle school did not end. I remember all the times she knew what was I going to say, the reason behind my giggles and the only reason behind my scariest of intentions.
Of all the time together, I shared with her my fantasy and all my poetical impulses. Although things did not turn out well in the end, there were still some pleasant times we spent together. I was in love with person back then. She was my friend and I trusted her as my confidante and companion. Until one day, when reality called. And reality had her voice and said: "I like him too. Can I keep him instead?". And I collapsed, with all the drama passionate people are capable of, I said: Yes. Maybe because some friendships mean more than anything. Although things did not even work out. But what did was she started breaking the cords. And all this became history to go through. Of our friendship and a new person that I discovered, it was the end of my trust in people.
I regained my trust in people meanwhile, but I don't know precisely how that happened, maybe it was just that I was lucky enough to meet people who were so dear and lovely and deserved my trust. Or maybe I regained my trust in people because my heart was not completely broken back then, the heart is a delicate mechanism, as long as it ticking, it cannot be completely broken. I guide myself through life with an incurable optimism, although optimism is not a disease, but some universal cure that makes the world move further. No matter how many times life betrayed me, after the normal times of sadness, I raise up again. I fall and I raise. Again and again. And white rose gets cultivated again and again.
And until then everybody was so close. That there was no time to make a friend so dear. Everybody was a blissful part of the whole. Nobody was complete.
At the end of adolescence, there are some cynical years that start, a sort of readjustment to the new perception of reality we have. In the first day at university, I met someone. A girl who approached me and seemed to be very determined to befriend me. I remember I noticed there was something strange about her way of laughing. It felt very fake and hypocritical. My intuition was triggering some alarm signals, but I reduced that inner voice to silence. But now I know that when intuition tries to tell me something, I should allow it to make its way into my thoughts and enter the thinking process. There are these two tools that humans seem not to use very often nowadays: intuition and imagination.
The strongest memory about my friend is her departure. I did not realise fully what was happening until I looked her for the last time and I saw her getting ready with reality that I was not a part of. When the confrontation was so humiliating, pondering over false facts I was still able to take all this in but to keep an eye contact with a person was never possible. Tears were shed until one day the most impossible "No" symbolising regrets was said. She was leaving and taking away with her my adolescence, that time of purity and hope and trust. The tears I shed that day are probably the beginning of my obsession about departures because from that day on, I wanted to keep everything and make it last. It was precisely that day when I started becoming a sort of obsessed with catching time and make it stand still.
Until all this time I caught glances of so many people, shared my heart with people who knew exactly how to eat it up. But when I took a glance over my shoulders it was exactly a friend who was quietly standing there unable to face or say anything in this matter. But still have been there. A friend who completed me in a way. Who took strolls around the corridors with me, shared my affection towards books and love for a subject just as me.
A friend who took my hand from the edge and never made me feel that she is holding on to the edge and such omnipresence was so real that I have felt it all along.
We took walks towards her departure everyday. Amongst those lanes were our memories of laughter, cribbing, love, hatred, theories, research, plans and about how one person sitting on the same place on that lane regularly can never get bored.
We built certain homes in each other while travelling in the markets, eating in the same place. Playing games that only we could understand. Making people wonder about how one person is complementary to the other. Standing up for one another in the most difficult times. And still ridiculing and accepting mistakes in front of each other. Which are never disclosed to any walls outside us.
There are friendships so deep that sometimes they resemble a love affair, you see your friend acting a bit like a jealous lover, they ask you whom have you been with and what you were doing, you see your friend a bit afraid someone else will get so deep inside your heart. And sometimes that bit of jealousy is sweet, you say don't worry, this thing we have is just between the two of us. And it will stay like this all the time, because I do know something that is permanent: it's called the permanence of memory and I'm afraid of it.
There is a time for purity in the life of each of us, when we look at the future with hope and we wait with our hearts open for the unknown and excitement of future experiences
There are relationship so deep in which dreams and expectations mingle that we cannot tell precisely which belong to us and which one to the other person.
We don't know when we meet those friends that stay the longest, how it happens and what great impact they have on our lives.
The night when she told me with trust a part of her life. I regained my trust in everybody one higher notch up which was most important. At every age I had a dearest friend to share my passions and my dreams with. Or aches, if any. But she stayed the longest. I remember all the people that we met, with whom we sometimes shared a table or a life with and I see them gone now. But it's still me and her and the poetry we share and a life lived to tell and to believe in something. I remember all the talks we had and the light ways of changing the topic of our conversations from the difference between Coke and Pepsi to the meaning of life: if it's expanding the consciousness or love. From all the people I know, she is the one that is not recognised by many as the most unique part that I wish to keep. From all the people I know, she is the only one, who became a character for my stories. And I remember calling her from far away just to let know about nothing and everything at the same time.
Life is all about sharing and if you have a friend to discover it with or to run away from vampires together, you are not alone. I remember the most recent memory was New Year Eve when everybody counted her automatically when they asked me about people who hold space in my heart and I was surprised to see this coming up from some strange souls. But this friendship and its out of phase similar emotions is the only case I know of balance in similarity.
And I hope it does not phase out.
