Love in the Big City Part 1: A friend is your needs answered
I still remember it as vividly as it were yesterday, starting college and moving to a new city, which felt like a world away from where I grew up. Adults love telling young people that the world is their oyster and that they'll meet new people every day.
After my defense of her sort of outed me, the two of us developed a relationship that consisted in the first place of talking trash about boys, as neither of us had previously had anyone with whom to share such thoughts, making us both desperate for a sounding board.
But what no one mentions is the loneliness and desperation that hit you once you enter adulthood. I remember begging, praying, and bargaining with God to meet one person with whom I would get along. Lucky for me, I met someone. Well, actually, I was fortunate enough to meet many someones.
We met whatever men we wanted without putting much effort into it, drank ourselves torpid, and in the morning met in each other’s rooms to apply cosmetic masks to our swollen faces and exchange tidbits about the men we had been with the night before.
Looking back, the foundations for many of those relationships were very shaky. Whatever the reason was, I latched onto them because they were that one constant thing in my life—the one thing I could count on. That was my Jaehee.
Even though the author refers to Jaehee as his best friend several times in this part, he later questions if he really knows her during her wedding preparations. This part asks the pertinent question: Do we really know our friends?
The author definitely knew Jaehee, but did he ever understand her? He knows what's happening in her life—if she's in contact with her parents, who she's dating, etc., but does he really understand the motivations behind her actions? Acceptance without understanding will most likely lead to diverging paths for friends.
What I'll be taking away from their friendship is that not every relationship needs to last forever. Some people come into our lives unexpectedly; being with them becomes as important as breathing, and then they just fade away into the background one day, and that's okay. The impermanence of the relationship doesn't take away anything from everything you've been through together.
