What begins...must end...?

I have lived a friendless life almost all my adult life.

It may appear to be an exaggeration, but it's the absolute truth. When best friends in school expanded (and replaced) their network of friends as they entered the working world, I found myself standing alone, held back by my loner-tendencies, looking back at where they left me trying very hard to find the open door that wasn't there.

During reflective moments, I would try remembering friends I had from my first year at school till my last. Hoh Yuen Peng - the tanned chinese girl who sat next to me in my Standard 1 class - the one who understood the tears that were forming in my eyes as I stared with fear at my exam paper, not understanding the meaning of a word which was the key to finding the answer the question asked - and who compassionately whispered the meaning and made me pass the exam with marks higher than hers and everyone else in that class. Ivy Chang who would hold me by my collar and bully me into queuing up, and who later grew up to become an absolutely lovely friend. The list goes on...Beh Mooi Mooi aka Beh Mooi kuasa dua (kuasa dua being the malay version for "power of two"), Kattai Saras (kattai being shortie in tamizh), Chin See Chin whose name we conveniently mispronounced as Chin Chee Sin (Chee Sin means mad in Cantonese). These were not my best friends - but somehow each time I think of friends from my primary school days, they unfailingly precede the rest. I cannot explain why...

And so, coming back to the subject of being friendless - yeah, I was one of those rare breed of people who could confidently say that they had absolutely no friends.

I spent the last 19 years of my life trying to convince myself of the possibility that colleagues could transform into friends if only I allowed them to. But they never really did. Except one - but she too later dissappeared into the uncertainties of my rather volatile career pattern. As I hopped from one organisation to another, I made many discoveries about the art of friendship - but none through direct experience.

What I did learn from direct experience was that I had absolutely no friends to turn to during my trying moments - much as I rummaged through the list of contact numbers I had written in my diary.

But one friend did eventually enter my life 4 years ago, and made me stop to think and correct myself each time I spontaneously found myself saying "I am friendless".

And for no obvious reason, or perhaps for reasons I could never fully comprehend, he lived in my heart, and my phone's contact list, as the friend I could turn to (sometimes...though not at all times...but hey, beggars can't be choosers now, can they? :) ).

We would have the worst of arguments, the best of conversations, and I was always allowed my share of tear-jerkers (complete with sobbing sessions that were completely devoid of vocabulary) which would almost always be followed with sound, "no-nonsense" words of advice uttered in the most gentle way.

Above all, he made me laugh like a child, and had never, not even once, displayed his anger despite the many times I gave him reasons to.

Like true best friends - we talked about everything and anything and remained connected with each other through the years, despite my unpredictable temper and his infuriating tendencies.

And today, that friendship came to an end, and I am, yet once again, friendless.

I can no longer look forward to my tear-jerkers being given importance, or expect to have my 1 am text message replied to.

Still, life goes on...

Afterall, isn't that what life really is - a journey that teaches you (among the many other lessons) that nothing really is permanent in life :) - what more a friend...

Of course, Khalil Gibran's poems would be perfect to end this post with. But since I have throughly exhausted the man's works (especially the ones on relationships) :) in my previous posts, and since I don't want to be "accused" of shoving Gibran into friends' minds :), I have opted for the lovely little piece below.

An Excerpt from THE VELVETEEN RABBIT

For a long time he lived in the toy cupboard or on the nursery floor, and no one thought very much about him. He was naturally shy, and being only made of velveteen, some of the more expensive toys quite snubbed him. The mechanical toys were very superior, and looked down upon every one else; they were full of modern ideas, and pretended they were real. The model boat, who had lived through two seasons and lost most of his paint, caught the tone from them and never missed an opportunity of referring to his rigging in technical terms. The Rabbit could not claim to be a model of anything, for he didn't know that real rabbits existed; he thought they were all stuffed with sawdust like himself, and he understood that sawdust was quite out-of-date and should never be mentioned in modern circles. Even Timothy, the jointed wooden lion, who was made by the disabled soldiers, and should have had broader views, put on airs and pretended he was connected with Government. Between them all the poor little Rabbit was made to feel himself very insignificant and commonplace, and the only person who was kind to him at all was the Skin Horse.

The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

"I suppose you are real?" said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled.