[going to rewrite] remember when

remember when | we lived next door

hey clarey:

You didn't reply. No - it's not your fault - I'm not expecting a reply either. So it's me again. Are you annoyed? But school isn't really hectic now, so I'll hope you can read every of my letters. Is that too much to ask? I'm sorry.

I realised recently that sometimes, an apology can solve everything, and sometimes, it can't. I didn't like apologising last time; I thought once I apologised, I lost. But now I realise, there's really nothing such as winning or losing if you apologise or don't apologise. You lose more if you don't apologise. And that's why I lost so many things in my life.

Clarey, remember when we lived next door to each other? We lived on Rosewood Street, my house was house number 13 and yours was 14. Side-by-side. A small street connected our houses. Our houses were gorgeous and gigantic at that time, I remember. Fairy-tale like houses, with a bright red roof. We loved planting in our front gardens and we competed to see whose plants bloomed first.

I remember putting in seeds of fruits - grapes, apples, oranges - and thinking that it would grow into a grape tree, an apple tree and an orange tree. Of course after school we realised that would never happen, but the times when we gobbled down our fruits and saved the seeds to plant in tiny pots was nice.

Unlike most children, our parents decided we didn't need to go to kindergarten. So when other children were off in matching plaid uniforms to kindergarten, two of us were left at home. Our parents decided that we were old enough as to not set the house on fire when they were at work, thus they left us alone in the house.

We were bored. And since we had no school, we played together every day right? I remember. 

I remember you would call me every day and I would rush down the steps from my room to the house phone and squeal into the phone:

"Hi Clarey!"

Our parents somehow managed to instill a foundation in us and we were able to speak more fluently than normal children our age. Right? Haha, I remember we were the ones conversing fluently always.

"What's up?" I would ask, although I knew the answer already. 

You would say excitedly,

"Hey Alicia, want to come over?"

And I would say yes, of course, and you would shout and scream "come over now quick!"

Before I left I would remember to take my favourite doll Lily. I still have her. She has long blonde hair that is plaited into two pigtails and a frilly bright pink dress. I look at it now and I want to cry. When I grew out of dolls I thought it was retarded. But now, it's just memories and memories she holds. 

I run down the short street connecting our houses in my red Hello Kitty light-up sneakers, that would give out light whenever they came into contact with the ground. I would knock on the door and ring the doorbell five times: it was our passcode for entry. One knock, five rings. 

I remember standing at your doorstep, waiting until you flung the door open with a gigantic smile on your face, saying "Oh my god you came!" even though we saw each other every day. 

I would ask you, every single day, what would we play?

And you would answer me: "dolls!" I didn't say no, because that time we were both so into dolls and make up and those girly things we can't imagine ourselves doing now. I would take out Lily and you would take out Poppy. They were matching dolls.

Lily had blonde hair, while Poppy had brown hair. Opposite of ours. I had the brown hair, and you had the blonde hair. 

We could play for hours remember? Until your parents came home or my parents called. Do you rememeber what we played with Lily and Poppy? I still remember. It's hilarious in a sense, but so painful to think about those days. I would play with dolls if I had another shot at this friendship. If I had. 

We imagined we were princesses with fluffy dresses and high heels, and we lived in pink castles with large windows and large balconies and flowers everywhere. We had all the desserts in the world to eat and all the toys in the world to play with.

Life there was good.

Everything was good then.

Life then was good.

And so maybe we should just remember this period of time when we were both innocent, young and happy and nothing worried us.

Everything was either black or white and there were no shades of grey in between.

Everything was good.

Everything was simple. And this simplicity made us so, so happy.

And ironically, this happiness, we never felt it again. We grew out of it, and along the road of growing up, we lost this kind of happiness. The happiness of pure simplicity. And as we grew up, we got less and less happy, but more and more sadder.

And someday, Lily ended up somewhere buried under a storage box, and Poppy was thrown into the attic. Those two dolls that contained so many memories - how could we discard them away so easily?

Maybe we should just remember what happened when we were six and we didn't go to kindergarten and how we went over to each other's house every day to play dolls and daydream and how everything was simple without any complications in our friendship.

So clarey, maybe we should just remember when we lived next door to each other

with love,

alicia