My Best Friend, Irene
I have never gone to any reunion parties organized by the school I graduated in high school. It’s not that I avoided going or didn’t want to reconnect to old classmates, batch mates and teachers but I was always somewhere every time an event had been planned. Out of country. Digging gold and feeding my burning ambition. Since graduating in the early 2000’s I have never seen some of them, and I wondered what could have been if I put the effort to reach out. At least.
Most of my friends and classmates were married. Even the weirdest and uncool kid in the class was taken. Years ago, when my Facebook account was still active, I would often see their post; mommy-things, kids smiling widely, post-natal selfies etceteras about the life they choose. And here I am after years of undiagnosed depression and anxiety, in my mid-thirties with a full-time job and empty apartment. Unmarried and refusing to take part of what everyone called a ‘’life’s cycle’’. After years of taking care of others, I just don’t have the ability to held myself responsible anymore. This doesn’t mean I run from responsibilities, I still pay my way of living. I am still responsible for the manpower of the company I worked with. Needless to say, I don’t want to care. I don’t know if I will ever bear life and use my uterus just so I can have something to say for when I decided to partake in the class reunion. Here I go again. Always comparing my life to others, finding flaws, pointing something unattractive in the life I have built.
Until a few months ago, when I received a message from Irene, my childhood best friend. We excitedly catch up, reminiscing the times when we were in primary to high school. She gratefully supplied me information on what happened to the whole class, even our aging teachers. We laughed at fond memories and frowned on those crushes we didn’t get to date. She told me everything about her current life, two kids and a hard time to raise them alone. That’s when I learned that her husband was inside the rehabilitation facility again and that this is the second time they took him in. She contacted me in hope of asking for a little ‘’help’’. I was saddened and felt like in a way, I was responsible for her situation. I should’ve done all I can to help her realize and see through him. I remember when she was dating the guy, we were both in our mid twenties. I didn’t hesitate breaking my thoughts on her, that I felt something is not right with him. She on the other hand, didn’t heed my warning and end up being knocked up by him. I was already out of the country when I heard they got married post natal. We would end up sending simple messages few times a year after that. Both of us were aware that something ceased the fire of our friendship. Until that very day when I learned of her life beyond the happy photos and posts on Facebook. She was in an abusive relationship that she saw herself as low and unworthy due to years of gaslighting.
Though a part of me wants to blame her for her situation, a part of me held back, ‘’Who am I to judge her choices?’’ This person whom I grew up with in that same old town, we share memories of growing up, of our childhood dreams and hope, our family knew each other, we ran and bathed on rainy days and write anonymous letters to our crushes. Both had escaped the web of chaos in that old town, the buzz of the high school life. We have both the energy of youth which I thought would never ran out. Once when we were in our teens drunk on the idea of marrying our princes. She was there for me when I faced existential crisis due to my rebellion, still there for me when my father and I fought because he doesn’t think I’m worth the penny to send me to college, fought with me against the world when I was forced to run away from home due to strict up-bringing of my parents. Irene was the more matured one, the motherly kind, the most patient and understanding. Yet I didn’t know her fully, she was traditional, I am progressive, unconventional. She was simple, she longed to be a full-time mother, she was dependent of all the people in her life including me, all of which I am not. At that moment, I wanted to held her hands, put her head in my shoulder as I pacify her sobs, and tell her that everything will be fine, but I am physically not there. This time, I won’t remind her of my warnings, it’s too late for that, instead I offered my best advice and help. She decided to look for a job with the help that I gave and though a little hesitant about it, I know she will turn up fine.
Irene’s reappearance in my life forced me to look back on things I had turned my back once. Everything in her seemed to put me back to those years when my mind was in a haze and she stood as my stronghold. Irene loved hard to the point of no return. She saved me from myself yet she could be the one who needs the saving. Both could be true.
I didn’t hear from her again. I wonder if she found a job or that the kids are doing fine and that she was doing alright. Sometimes, I wanted to reach out to her, to ask her if everything was okay but I withheld. I am there for her, and I will always be, but it’s enough that I’d done something to ease her circumstances. Ten years ago, we were both in love, Irene, blinded by her passion and superficial hope in life and I, in-love of changes and opportunities that I rebel on the thought of staying on the same old town. It was not her fault, neither of us. We only choose a path for ourselves and from these we reap the consequences. Someday, maybe I would have the chance to attend those class reunion parties and catch up with old friends and classmates, maybe I would see Irene there and her children and maybe we will have a lot of catching up to do about life. Of how, we didn’t regret everything that has shaped our life, both of us have found our reason, our peace in the thought of each other. Maybe by that time, our paths would reveal an intricate route yet a single destination.
“No one’s life ever goes as they planned. That truth alone should bring a sense of relief to everyone.”
― Andrena Sawyer“Stop thinking you’re doing it all wrong. Your path doesn’t look like anybody else’s because it can’t, it shouldn’t, and it won’t.”
― Eleanor Brownn“What lies behind you and what lies in front of you pales in comparison to what lies inside you.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson
