day four

Your favorite photograph of your best friend

It was easier to find a photo of all of us. So, my two best girlies (on my right)!

I love them to death...but as they're both in college now, I rarely get to see either :(. But since Jia (far right) has a more-lenient-than-usual schedule for the month of January, hopefully I'll get to see her pretty face soon!

bus rides

I was drifting off, but he nonchalantly disregarded my tendency to sleep on any and every moving vehicle and instead commented on the traffic jam we were facing while leaving Manhattan.

I figured it wouldn't hurt to reply and then surreptitiously slide back to a comfortable silence and fall back asleep, so I agreed and noted the odd influx of commuter buses traveling into New York City when the rest of the world seemed to be leaving it.

And then the topic slowly morphed from the sheer number of commuters to police cars and what a hassle pulling over bad drivers would be in the city...and from there it on took off into an amalgamation of college acceptance talk, comments of how fast grade school had passed and how much faster the next few years would go, including a nostalgic twinge of whether our string of mutual friends would still be as close and amiable as we are to each other right now.

Some advice found its way into the conversation, along with encouragements on future endeavors and realizations of what this school has done to both of us, in terms of self-motivation.

After that, thankfulness of how privileged we both are to have loving parents who can barely be shoved into the mold "Asian Parents" have been pushed into by their loving first-generation American children.

It is the strangest thing, the concept of friendship. It emerges from the most unlikely and likely circumstances: sometimes you spot a person and instantly know that the two of you will become good friends. Sometimes the friendship is reluctant, a result of coercion--but a good result. And sometimes friendship manages to find its way through a mess of bitter emotions and bad first impressions...and turn into something really cool, for a lack of better words.

Am I lucky enough to experience all three?
Yes.

Will I ever cease to be amazed at how people can talk for hours on end without hesitation or a lack of topics, even if such a conversation has never existed between the two?
No.

bitter

Because they're leaving me in a year
Because they won't miss me
Because I'm going to be left alone, literally
Because I've invested so much in them and will be left with nothing
Because I'm selfish.

I think that hits things spot on.

This year...I'm torn. Half of me wants to just say, screw it, and learn to fend on my own (the reason why I refuse to willingly use friends' old binders to study out of, even though I have no intentions of cheating or anything remotely similar to plagiarizing). Ignore hang-out requests, ditch them at lunch, and essentially wean myself off of the comfort of their presence.

At the same time, the other half of me is wailing and pounding on my heart, telling me that that kind of thinking is senseless, and that I should embrace every moment I have left until they leave. After all, I did grow up with them in pretty much every sense you can imagine. I love them. They're my second family. They're a huge reason why I can make it through each day. My encouragement and support system.

However, selfish as it may be, I can't help but feel like I'm being abandoned...and as a result I feel that I should be strengthening my relationship with people my age. Not to say I'm anti-social, but I invest an embarrassingly small amount of time to my school friends and to people my age in general. I think it's a comfort thing; I'm always told that I matured fast for my age, and I felt more in place with those who were older than me. But seeing I seem to have stopped maturing (or else this wouldn't be an issue, eh?) and everyone else I deemed "immature" or "not understanding" is now (and probably has been for a while, except my lack of vigilance has made me ignorant) at the same level I am, it makes sense to work on those relationships.

And I will...just I don't know what I value more? Though the obvious answer is a clear balance between learning to get used to not being with them all the time and making the best of their time left.

Next year is going to be ridiculously different.