On kismet, happenstance and coincidence

[vanillaandbutter]

on rocky friendship.

Neither you nor anyone else will ever understand what exactly you have come to mean to me over the years, because I barely understand myself. I can only explain you in all the words I have in my vocabulary, and maybe the words friend, best friend, close friends, would come to mind. And everyone will understand approximately what I mean, and that you must play a very large role in my life indeed.

But they wouldn't understand how much you've come to matter, how big an impact you have on my life. 

You're like family. Except I picked you, out of the billions of people in this world. I had a choice, and it could have just as easily been anyone else. But I had the choice and I picked you. 

And I don't know and I can't say what it would have been like if someone else had taken your place, except that I have never wished for anyone else, and that makes all the difference. 

Our friendship is odd, and I can't measure it against anyone else's. But we fit when we see each other, and even when it's been a long time our conversations still click and we still know where to laugh. 

It's never been the kind of friendship where everything is perfect, and there are times when we make each other angry by accident, and there are times when we do it on purpose. 

But in between, sometimes there are the moments when we both gentle enough to admit that our friendship has it's own category in our lives, and your friends know my name like I am someone with a status in your life, and you hug me, once in a blue moon, but you hug me like it meant all the words you wouldn't say.

And in these moments I can still remember exactly why I used to spend hours transiting to see you every week, why I'd bring you groceries, wrapped in aluminium foil in my backpack, why I drop what I'm doing to answer your calls. 

You doesn't treat me like a princess. A lot of times you don't even always treat me like a best friend. You don't treat me like my welfare matters more than yours, nor are you protective about the things I come across.

But you leave me a place in your life where I feel irreplaceable. And there are these moments where I feel like you see me in a way no one else will ever. And you know me and I drive you crazy but somehow you believe so deeply that I am the good girl who is nice at heart, the kind of person who gets along with everyone.

And your beliefs are so deep and so genuine that I can't help believing the same sometimes. 

[vanillaandbutter]

on conflicts.

You've always been an easy person for me to argue with. And more often than not, my temper makes me want to. I want you to know exactly why I think you are wrong. I want you to know why I don't approve of the way you think about so many things, and I want the things I say to change the way you feel.

Maybe it's the way you state your words, the careless abandon that you fling your words with, never leaving room for the off chance that you might be wrong. It makes me angry because I don't agree, and it grates on me that  you feel you know the people you have never tried to know. 

Maybe years ago I wouldn't have cared, and there was a time I got to know you and all of this assurance was attractive. And I am not sure whether it is through all the times I held my temper and left feeling chastised, like a child, or through simple pride that I have developed this kind of contemptuousness towards your attitudes. 

It would have been the perfect moment for us to have it out, to lay down our cards and find out whether or not all the pieces have been where we have always assumed. But when that perfect moment came, I found myself more hesitant than I always thought I would be. And I'm not sure if it was the moment, the mood, or just my preference to avoid the conflict that would surely result...but I found myself passing on the opportunity. 

You're leaving again, and when you are gone none of this will matter once more. And I won't have to think on your place in my life for another eight months.

[vanillaandbutter]

on still waters.

With you, I always seem to be surfing on waves of emotion, uncertain whether the next wave will take me off my back or not. 

I try, but you...just don't seem to be someone I can cast out from my life. I thought last summer would erase any lingering tenderness I ever held for you. I thought I could never let you hold such an important place in my life again, thought I could never love you the way I used to. 

I thought that I would stop caring so much, that it would stop mattering the things you did, and that I could be resigned to your occasional indifference and my lack of priority in your life. 

But a year has come and gone and seeing you still brings the same anxiety and anticipation to my life. You are as important as you have ever been. And I still await your attention when you are present, still feel the same need to monopolize your time. 

Everything is the same, the same, the same. Except that I worry about my place in your life more than I ever used to. And more and more, I feel as though the peak of our friendship has passed.

[vanillaandbutter]

on admittance.

With you I never have any definite answers. Not from you, not from myself. 

For a while every post was about you. And you filled my life with a lot of joy, a lot of happiness. I said before that I would follow you to the ends of the earth, and your company alone was enough. 

When you dreamt your big adventures, I dreamt along with you. You would describe your visions as you saw it, mountains and mountains of possibilities. And no matter how much your world differed from mine, I told myself it would be okay, because you would never leave me behind. 

When I was with you, I have always been a little more than me. With you, there has never been something I cannot do, cannot be. And when people meet me with you, it strips away all of the crafted personas and reputations built for over the years. And for a moment I am me, and all I am is the best friend that sticks with you through all the crazy things you do. 

I loved that reputation. Loved the freedom you gave me to be whatever I wanted to be. Loved that you liked me, no matter who I ended up becoming.

I loved you. Whether it be as a friend, as family, even I cannot identify. 

But somehow no matter how hard I have been searching, how much I have tried to let others fill my life, there's still this oddly shaped imprint that no one else's shoes can fill. And I can't shake the odd loneliness that seems to have grabbed me since last year.

I blame you for a lot of things that have happened since last year. I blame your temper for getting the best of you, for unleashing a kind of nastiness that I never thought I'd see. I blame you for the way you saw your responsibilities to me, as a obligation, the weight to hold you back. The way you saw your time away from me as freedom, the way you arranged your activities around the obstacle I posed. I blame you for all the times you left me waiting, for lunch, for dinner, for you to come back. For all the times I worried as you had fun, and I trailed like an abandoned afterthought. I blame you for all the things you won't tell me, the same secrets you know are standing in the middle of our friendship. The ones that make you turn your back on me to hide, that leave our conversations full of weighted heavy silences. 

But most of all, I blame you because you left me holding nothing. I left with my best friend, with visions of an epic adventure, kodak moments of happiness, and the promise that we would do it altogether. 

Somewhere along the way, I lost my best friend to handfuls of strangers. People you had never met, and some that you will never meet again. And I don't know who they were, nor how wonderful they were. Only that thousands of hours of friendship still seem to pale in comparison to the excitement they can pose, and you left me picking up the pieces of shattered visions by myself. 

I can fault you for so many things, but I can't, knowing who you are, what you're like. I can't fault you for the things you never asked for, and all these years I have tried to mold you to the image of what I thought you should be. I wanted our friendship to be picture perfect. For us to be inseparable, storybook best friends. I wanted it to be us against the world, to see the world together. But most of all, I wanted you to need me as much as I needed you. 

And I always thought that if I gave enough, if I fought hard enough, it would all eventually become reality. And I thought if I ingrained myself into your life enough, it would matter when I wasn't there. 

I'm afraid of being lonely. Who isn't? And since I was little I have always been afraid to be by myself. When I am, I imagine all the visible and invisible monsters of this world, and I scare myself with their imagined existence. 

Last summer, lonely was trudging across the street for dinner after another disappointing text, too tired to walk any farther to fend off advances from random men. It was waking up alone and realizing you never came back, and never texted or called. It was taking a taxi to the Jakartan festival alone, no idea where I was or where I was going, and you being too distracted to remember to call me back. It was sitting across from you in silence as you tapped away on your phone all lunch, all dinner, and listening to your feeble excuses of why you weren't going to be around the rest of the night. 

So I can explain away our absences from each other as the need to take a break, the idea that we tired of each other's company. 

We saw each other so many hundreds of hours before that, and it never happened then. 

I stopped making time for you because I stopped knowing what I was supposed to be. Because I'm too afraid to be left behind again, too afraid to be pushed aside once more. 

I don't want to never be important enough again. I want my opinion to matter enough to change your life. I want you to care enough to chase my time. I want you to not want to leave me behind, to prefer my company over theirs. I don't want to keep being the second option you keep open, the person you call last minute when you have free time. I want you to miss me, to discover that I made a difference in your life. I don't want to be left not sure what I am coming back with once more. 

I can't have you be so important and be abandoned once again.

So tell me what it means for us, that I still miss you so, so much after everything. Do I fight and try once again? Can you make it worth it? 

[vanillaandbutter]

on indifference.

It's always been like this with you. Sometimes you make me so angry, so unhappy. And I tell myself I will never let you hurt me like that again. And I will never let you have the ability to upset me. 

And this time around, I won't let you be so important.

But then I see you and you're everything I remember. And you're just as funny and capable and you laugh at everything I expect you to, and you ask the questions that always made me feel like you cared. 

And even if it was only because of a wrong turn, the fact that you came to visit me at all still crumbles at my facade of indifference. 

You come in and my mom greets you and you sit on the couch like you have a thousand times before, and my dad comes in and pats you on the shoulder, and it's like even after all this time they still acknowledge you as one of my most important people. 

I ask you when you're free and I know your words are an empty promise, but it seems like you will try, and for a moment I just want to believe them anyways.

In the end all my indifference is for show, and of all the things you evoke from me it has never been apathy.

And after all, all I ever walk away from our interactions with are the thought that I so very missed you.

[vanillaandbutter]

on potatoes.

I have written you a thousand posts, and maybe there are a thousand yet to come, but as long as there are words, no matter how redundant, there seems reason yet to keep writing. 

We always throw around the phrases I don't know where I would be without you. And it's not untrue, and I really don't know where I would be. But it's also for all the moments that I know exactly where I would be without you. 

There are times when I wonder where I went wrong, why there seems to be so many disappointing people. And I can't understand if it is me, or if it is them, and whose fault it is when I am unhappy. 

But then there's you, and I must have done something right. Because I have you and you treat me like I'm important, like I am worth all this effort. 

And there are a thousand people on your friends list, but I claim you as my best friend. And everytime I see you, I feel so very honored to have this privilege. 

It's in the millions of things you do, the way you care what I like and don't like, the way you listen like every word I say matters, the way you share your life with me as though I am important enough to have a part. 

But sometimes it's nothing about what you do, and everything about what you are. And you are down to earth and you are a good listener, and you are observant and compassionate and empathetic. 

And you try to understand the things that I am so stubborn to do, even though you know I will do them anyways. And you humor me and pretend you don't see it, even when I am not quite so subtle and you know exactly what I mean by the words I say. 

With you, I know who I am, and I feel like it's who I want to be. 

So thank you, my dear, for being in my life. You make everything else worth it.

[vanillaandbutter]

on empty promises.

Sometimes when you speak of promises and all the places you will take me, all the things we have yet to do, I get caught up in your fantasies and imaginations. 

And for a moment I'm once again ready to follow you to the end of the world, just as I was once last year. 

But you showed me last year where all your promises would lead, to piles of empty words and disappointment. And sometimes I just want to understand why I still want to believe you, why I am so convinced by your convictions. 

I know you, and you know me. And we will forever be familiar, and we will work, like an oiled machine. But what does it mean, for everything to run so smoothly if I can never count on you to be there?

Birthdays haven't always mattered to me. They didn't used to, and you were the one who made me feel like my birthday should be special. And you are the person that I spent both of my last birthdays with, this day that is supposed to  be so special. 

And I don't begrudge you of your own life, the busy things you do. You will always have a legitimate reason for canceling on me. 

But I wanted you there. And it mattered that you weren't. 

Why is this a trend with you? Why are there always so many moments left in silent disappointment, and you don't seem to realize it at all? 

Eventually you will call and it will be like nothing ever happened. And it won't matter that you didn't show, and it will be no big deal.

Except that more and more, your name just brings up feelings of disappointment. And I'm slowly learning to stop believing in all the things you promise me.

[vanillaandbutter]

on character building.

Being single builds character. 

It's not easy because you have no one to reassure you that you are attractive. Worthy of being loved unconditionally. 

It's not easy because you have to be happy for everyone else. You have to watch them, and even if all rationality tells you that now is not the time for you, not yet, some little part of you wishes that it were. And as people embrace and kiss each other on the head affectionately, and stare moon-eyed while they think no one is watching, you look away with the feeling of intruding.

But when you tell them that you are happy for them, you mean it. And that's the character building part.

It's not easy because people are meant to be together. Meant to be a half, a complement. And when you have that person who has your back, it doesn't matter how crazy, how silly the things you want to do are. It's both  of you against the world, and for that reason alone you are invincible. 

So it's character building. Because you learn to be reliant on yourself, to find your own happiness, to be responsible for it. You learn to be invincible alone, and to hold your head up even higher. You learn to be patient, and you convince yourself it will be worth it in the end. 

[vanillaandbutter]

on telling points.

Maybe you are right. A year ago you told me that you always felt that timing between us was a little off. And maybe this is how things will always be. 

I've learned to be very good with understanding how I feel. To be able to pinpoint exactly what emotion it is, and to be able to form it into words. Sometimes I wonder if part of that was your influence. I still remember the days when you yearned to know exactly how I felt. And back then I could never form it into words. There were just emotions and emotions, but I never had the words to tell you what they were.

I have the words now, but it doesn't matter so much anymore.

I don't know how much we care about each other. How much of these are actions spurred by years of habit and expectation, how much by genuine affection, I can't quite separate anymore. 

I don't know why I want to please you. I don't know why I still try, why I'm still awaiting that moment we reconnect again. But most of all I don't understand if all this talk of history and this idea that we are irreplaceable to each other is a lie. 

Do you ever reach a point in friendship where there is too much that has been done to be erased, a point when it is time to call it quits?

I always thought the answer was no. When you have the option to continue, if you have both survived everything that has happened and your relationship still stands, what can ever make you give up on a friendship that was intense enough to fight over?

I can't decide if it's the result of maturity or jadedness, if I have come to realize that I can't fight or hold onto everything in this world, or if it's simply a loss of optimism, the result of giving up.

But I'm tired of you upsetting me. And I don't feel like I mean anything to you anymore. I hesitate to define us as friends, because I don't feel like you see me as one. And if we aren't kind to each other, if we don't talk about anything of importance, then what are we?

I'm not sure if you have given up on me first, and maybe I am the one slow on the uptake. Maybe, while in my deluded mind, this was how our dysfunctional relationship works, they were really the signs of a failing friendship. 

You still enjoy my attention, I think. Only it's more material now. It's not out of genuine happiness or reciprocity of friendship. I don't know what or who has changed you, or if I even played a part to force your hand, but the way you see things...are a lot more shallow than they used to be. 

I don't really know who you are anymore. And to date, I don't think you really understand who I am either. And I can't come up with a worthwhile reason why I can afford to keep trying.

So this is us. We have never been very good at making things work. We never try at the same time, and no matter how much we learned and matured, we could never speak to each other properly. It could be a matter of kismet, our own shortcomings, I really don't know. 

But maybe this is where I start to let it go. It seems that point in a friendship exists after all.

[vanillaandbutter]

on rainwash.

I think maybe as you get older, things start to be less about fun, and more about experience. And maybe because they get more complicated, or we get more complicated, happiness doesn't come so easily anymore. 

When I was little every trip was fun. It was all about the activities we did, the places we went. I loved disneyland, loved amusement parks, loved being in a hotel room. 

The older I get the more I miss it. I miss the simplicity of being on vacation with your family. When you don't worry so much about the relationships between people, and everyone is worried about everyone else. 

Now it's all about learning to move past things. Learning to be impenetrable, to let everything wash off you. And it doesn't matter if you can or not, because you have to be. 

In the end, we are all so imperfect. And the older we become, it seems the more imperfect we grow to be.

[vanillaandbutter]

on sinking boats.

You were away for so long and you sort of faded from my life. For a long time I kind of forgot about you, and in the end maybe I missed you, and maybe I didn't, but I can't deny that I am equal parts hesitant and relieved to have you return.

I think maybe I was excited, and in your absence I had felt I should be. And I misjudged that in a year apart we would both have grown to be a little more than who we are. 

I have not seen you yet, and we have only traded a handful of words but I am not happy you are back. I thought I would be, I thought you would be, but all I found today is that you are who you have always been. 

Maybe I have no right to judge you, and I never really have had that right. And in our entire not-relationship it has been my biggest flaw, and at times the greatest downfall of our relationship. 

But you make me angry the way no one else seems to be able to, and I can't attribute the irritation to caring or to fondness. 

You're callous with the things you do. I don't know how you feel inside, why you choose to do the things that you do. i don't know if these words are your version of a joke, of your way of keeping distance. I have never had someone throw my actions in my face the way you do, the things that I have gone out of my way to do for them to be happy. 

I'm not angry that you're not grateful, and I have never seeked for your appreciation. I'm angry because you don't acknowledge that I wasn't obligated to do these things for you. I'm angry because for some reason, you feel like I owe it to you. I'm angry because I didn't have to, and you didn't have the decency to say thank you. 

I am so, so frustrated with you that I don't know where the lines between irritation, frustration, and just pure anger begin. Things between us have always been this way, and I have always let it be this way.

But today, today I asked why I choose to work so hard for you to be in my life, and I stopped having an answer. 

For years I thought I owed it to you, that our history made my effort obligatory. I convinced myself you were a good friend, that you understood me the way very few other people could. I told myself that no one else had ever been so passionate about loving me, that regardless of how things happen, things between us had always been more painful for you. And I told myself that I know the way it feels to endlessly chase after something you could never have, and so I kept working for our friendship. 

You're a character. Have always been, will always be. You will always be fun, always be full of snarky remarks, the kind of person that will make friends wherever you go. And I don't begrudge you any of those things, because I remember exactly the things I have always liked about you. 

I have never deleted your emails, and to this day I can remember the kind of words you have spoken to me in your life. You made me feel for the longest time that I was someone so special that I was irreplaceable, and for a while, I truly believed you had the heart to treat me like the most precious thing in your life. 

I can remember the glowing words that you have written, typed, spoken to me. And for all those moments, I want our friendship to last forever.

These days are different now, though. You don't care so much the way I feel, the way I see things, what happens to me anymore. Your words stop being funny, stopped being filled with meaning some time ago. You're not interested in my life, you don't tell me about yours, and we stopped learning about each other years ago. 

These days, when I hint at being upset, you are only concerned if I am jealous, if I miss you. 

I miss the person who told me once that you would always make me happy, that you would never let anyone upset me. 

No one upsets me more purposefully than you do, whether you know it or not. 

I don't miss who you are now. And having you back, all I feel is this heaviness of annoyance and weariness that wasn't there when you were away. And no matter how much I take deep breaths and clear my mind, it doesn't seem to go away. 

For years I never walked away from you because I told myself I had no choice. That with you, if I didn't try, you never would. And if I didn't value our friendship, it would disappear with the wind. Maybe I was convinced on some level that you needed me, and that I needed you. And you, you have always been convinced that the people who are worth keeping in your life will be the ones to take the steps to remain there.

I don't know where it all went wrong. If after so much effort that has gone into keeping this friendship alive, if it is worth it to let it fade away. And I don't know if it is my fault or yours, and after all these years I'm not so certain where the blame falls anymore. 

I owed you. I owed you because I was the first to lead you to take that leap of faith, and because I was too flighty for you to hold onto. Because I couldn't value your feelings, or return them with anything of equal value. And because I have hurt you, time and time again, and I hated hurting you. 

So maybe I have taken for granted that you would always be there. That in the end, some part of you would always be mine, and some part of you would always value me above everyone else. 

Maybe it is a little conceited, a little selfish, a little haughty. But aside from that, what have I ever truly asked for from you? What have you given me other than the favor of your feelings and your words? 

What promises that you have made in all these years have you kept? 

How many birthdays have you remembered? How many times have you been there when I was truly unhappy? How many of those times have you recognized?

How much of my life have you shared.

In the end, in the last few years, I have had nothing but words from you. What do I have to believe your words with?

I just want you to show me, just once, that you meant it when you said you wanted to see me happy. I want you to ask me what has happened in my life, what is happening now. I want you to tell me something that matters to you, something that tells me how you feel about things now. I want to know that we still matter to each other, that there is some reason we still bother with these useless conversations, that I still blindly throw around these words of friendship for a reason.

Because today I realized that you've stopped treating me like you are worried I will leave you. And I'm not sure if it's because you stopped caring, or because you realized that I have never left you no matter what happened.

So forgive me this once for my own selfish tendencies, but I'm tired of this tug a war we play. 

Show me that it's still worth fighting for, because I don't think I can do this anymore.

[vanillaandbutter]

on indifference.

Sometimes I can't stand it. I can't stand the things that people do that drive me crazy, and I can't stand the fact that it bothers me. I want to be so much better, so much more capable of forgiveness and understanding all those admirable virtues, and I'm not sure if it's cynicism or maturity that drives the indifference and assertiveness I present to the world now. 

[vanillaandbutter]

on blogs.

I'm a stickler for routine and it's unsettling, even just to change a blog. And I wondered if it mattered, if it was what I had wanted all along. 

But in the end I couldn't. Because you mattered too much for me to take you out of it, and because I couldn't bear to not be honest here, when it's so hard being honest anywhere else. 

So...to a fresh blog and a fresh page.