by Piny Chen
Friendship is something so important in life. At the start of young age, you probably already experience friendship. In the playground, in kindergarten, etc.
But over the years, you might have noticed, that your friendships start to change, what you do together, how you treat them, what you have in common. At first it was having playdates, eating ice cream together, imagining stuff, playing outside, watching movies. Then it turned into hanging out, telling secrets, going out shopping or watching a movie alone. And by the time I was in high school, I started observing different perspectives of friendship. It was like a shifting, a cosmic one, maybe even. I won’t tell any names, but I will make some up to make things clearer.
This text is fully written in my perspective, causing it to have divided and incomplete thoughts.
First day of school. New school, no friend. Try and fit in. Laugh at their jokes, tell them about yourself; make it impressive, and they will like you. That is what I told myself. So I did. I tried. But the more I tried to melt in, the bigger feeling I had to being neglected. At one point I stopped trying. It was like ice meeting fire, and I was ice. So the days continued, just me, sitting alone, one one to talk to. There were also some people which I myself didn’t like at the start. Not that they were mean, but they made a bad start at the first day.
Sometime later, I joined a girl, very nice and open (, we’ll call her A), also an outsider, and another one (, we’ll call her C), more of the shy kind. We sat together in lunch told each other gossip and trusted each other. A always liked to tell about herself, she was a social butterfly. We were bees and flowers, adoring and loving her. C was, like ever, very still around everyone else, but told us everything when we were alone. Me? I talked- a lot, but I was never as beautiful, never as humble, never as smart as A. Just in between. Finally, friends. I thought. Someone who actually likes the teachers’ pet.
Fast forward to half a year later.
I got placed next to a sporty, talky girl, let’s name her J. She’s very kind, but she always awns to sit with the cool girls. Well, I did, too, but only because of her. Never did I have the heart to tell her, that the cool girls didn’t like her. She was just too happy with them. But slowly, thy started to accepts her. I remember one day, when we were eating, them saying J, at the start I didn’t like you that much, but now, I think you are really cool. You can be friend with us, if you want. Well, I was happy, but sad too. J got what she deserved, but I was alone again.
Getting back to loneliness was hard. I often grumbled about it, thankfully, I still hat a spot with A and C. We became unsepreatable. This is what I’m talking about. I thought. We had a really nice gossip club, where we would tell our newest gossips every Tuesday, mostly about what we would call “ripe pears” and “unripe pears”.
© Piny Chen 2024-06-20