Saturday, February 14, 2009

There's Always Somebody Else..

The Keeper
We call each other "Secret friend". Because though we've ran around far faraway land with the same set of friends our closeness is a secret not one of our other friends know. We are close the way two people who've shared similar tragedies are bonded.It's about us keeping check of each other's progress. How we are both trying to learn to let go of the life we had at the land of far faraway. We are each other's sounding board, we are not there for each other in the way best friends should be. But once a week we check how it's been. Sometimes it gets a bit tiring to listen to someone blabbering over and over again about the past, about the difficulty of moving on. And with that I am lucky to have someone like her. We are each other's keeper, It's like an Alcoholic Anonymous thing for two, a support group for recovering hearts.

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The Bestfriend

On Valentine's Day I was out and about the whole day with chores and appointments. I went out early to buy some last minute stocks for my tindahan and then travelled the one and a half hour to visit my Pastor's wife, my ate/adviser/laugh buddy/and food giver. I promised the bestfriend that we'll have dinner together that night but I came home at 10 past. And what do you know? He waited for me. Awww. Am I not so lucky to have such a dependable best friend? So there we were, at half past ten eating sweetly delicious walnut topped fried chicken, some soda and radish cubes,babbling about as usual.Yes it's junkfood, but it's a pretty swell thing to pass the time, bantering about our own goals, business and otherwise. Him, being the more experienced entrepreneur, advising me, the novice, on some key points I've glossed over.

People always assume that to have great relationships with the opposite sex, one must have romance. But really, there is such a thing as platonic happiness. You can have affection for someone without dreaming of making a home or of being in bed with the person. When you can have someone who promises to be with you for the long haul, whom you can ask for favors without any hesitations, who can carry a nine kilo bag for you for two hours while you walk about with only your handbag, him trailing behind, you realize, hell, this is great! All the benefits of a good relationship without the pressure and desperation of wanting to make it last.

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There's always somebody else to know, to meet, to learn something from everyday. It's maybe why I loved jumping into business. The interactions give me a buzz. Six years of calculations and numbers can be tiring, which is maybe why I always go back to writing when I'm at my lowest. It's the easiest way I know of reaching out to others.
Anyway, a day after Valentine's, the bestfriend and I meet a pretty cool middle-aged Korean man who might turn out to be a good friend and business partner. He's gone all over the world, yes, and has set up his own businesses.But most of all, he had this good aura about him, he seems open and genuinely felt that our meeting each other on the train was something special. As we went our separate ways, I told the bestfriend that it was surreally exciting, the opening of a new possibility. The air filled equally with the yes and the no, the maybe and maybe not. So maybe there is nothing to it and we will not see the cool man who seemed to be willing to be a friend and mentor to us, or maybe he'd do good on his promise and invite us for lunch or dinner.
We'll see, we'll see. But for now we await the days with added zest, knowing fully well that there will always be somebody else to bump into, to share a bit of who we are each day.