Treehouse Stories

Dear Friend,

It may be a little too early to be writing this. It’s like writing an obituary for someone who’s still breathing, or writing a thank-you speech for an award I’ve not won. But if I don’t write it now, when will I?

I need to write it now. If I don’t, thoughts about how you brighten my day with your smile or of how your laugh filters out the day’s baggage will dissolve into the night, becoming nothing more than a passing thought or a midnight musing. And I don’t want my last memories of you be watered down just yet.

We don’t have much time left. These past few years have flown by incredibly quickly. What we thought would be forever is now limited to months and weeks and hours. Days we’ve taken for granted is now time we regret not spending together.

Do you remember that night we lay under the stars? Our sleeping bags did nothing about the cold, but we didn’t care. With bloodshot eyes and stuffy noses, we sang and laughed and cried. You told me about your grades, you told me about the pressure, you told me about your insecurities, you told me about how you felt so alone all the time.

You told me about your father and how you felt when he left. You told me about your uncle, and how guilt-ridden you felt when you were forced to hide it from his own brother. You told me about your cousin, and how his necklace of rope haunts you every day. Every fucking day. As your stories spiralled into the universe, all I could do was sit and listen. That was all I could offer, but I owed you much more than that.

I didn’t have anything to say. All I could think about was why. Why did such a beautiful and unsullied soul such as yours have to endure all that? What did you do to deserve that? And all you did was paint the world yellow. Who wouldn’t want you?

You haven’t even left yet. I haven’t even left yet. But time is ticking short. Before we know it, we’ll be standing on that stage tall and proud: with our shoulders back, tummies in, pinkies out, and lifted chins.

We’ll be looking at each other, our eyes blurred and our voices broken from all the cheering. Because we’ve made it. We’ve survived and we made it. Right now, we doubt ourselves. But we can do it. We’re talented, capable young women, and we’re ready to take on the world.

And, yeah. You’ll slip and you’ll trip and you’ll relapse. That’s alright. Falling and failing is inevitable. The most important thing is that you pick yourself up from that trough. You were the one who told me that you didn’t want to simmer in self-pity. “We’re all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” Remember?  

Now it’s time for me to thank you. It’s time for me to thank you for tolerating my dry humour, my tantalizing mood swings and my insane family. Despite our bickering, our disagreements, our temporary fall-outs and our innate desire to impale each other’s forehead with a baseball bat, you were still there for me.

You stuck by me. You lifted me up on my worst days, and sustained my best. You stayed with me, no matter how embarrassing, loud, crude and selfish I was. For that, I cannot express how privileged I feel to have had you in my life.

So thank you.

Now, I know this was leading up to some goodbye or something. I don’t want to say goodbye just yet, because that implies definitive closure. Instead, I’ll say “see you soon.” By leaving this ending open-ended, I guess it still gives us an opportunity to grow together. A little like co-evolution, I suppose.

We don’t know when our paths will cross again—if they’ll cross at all. But if we want them to, we have to put in some serious effort to sustain what we’ve established.

And I know you’re not good with commitment.

So, see you soon, Friend.

Oh, and I love you. I think I forgot to mention that. I love you: no matter how much of a loser you are.