DEAD FRIEND WALKING

In life there will always be that someone who will stay in your heart for as long as you can feel. He may not be the one you end up with, but a slightly special in relation .... a friendship platonic


I have such a person in my life. He was this sweet little boy I knew from teenage years and we were together as friends since then for as long as I can remember, at least in my heart. The guy who would tell me how he'd avenge someone for torturing the oppressed. The guy who I'd trade stories of adventures of raiding someone else's dusun in the kampung and us laughing about it. The guy who you can count on when you fall and hurt yourself to accompany you to the hospital when your parents are not with you. The sweet guy who would just listen to you blabbering about things that don't make sense and still think it's funny.

The guy who would make you laugh with stories of wedding crashings. The guy who don't really talk much about his feelings but you will know and feel it even when he said nothing at all. The guy who would give you silly ideas about living it wrong sometimes just to remember how to have fun during a time when everything in life seem too serious. The guy who would include you in the prosecution of silly things he did like stuffing gun powder in the spark plug and throwing it up into the air to produce this mother of all fire cracker sound.

The guy who'd had the talent of justifying the holes that that firework had left on the road. The person you you know even without looking that he will have a secret net waiting somewhere to catch your fall. The guy who you want him to be in your life as a true friend forever. The guy who you don't see for the longest time yet pick up where we left when we see each other a couple of years later.


Perhaps there is a reason why childhood friends should just remain childhood friends for simple reasons like, people grow, and they change. Sometimes, they change into someone you least expected. Perhaps I am a bit selfish in wanting to hold on to the memories of that sweet little boy I no longer see in this present grown up man my eyes are feasted upon. I clearly had ,in the past disregarded the little warning signs, dismissing them as false alarm. But when warning signs become actual danger, you are left with nothing but a cold cold heart, from the realization that, although you want the memories of that sweet little boy to hold on to for as long as you'd like to, truth is, it is time to move on.

It's hard to love a friend, when he is no longer there but just a fiction of your memory. All that stood in front of me is this grown man almost devoid of compassion, devoid of his inner child. One who makes you wonder, "what the hell did you do to my friend??". I look at him and miss the idea of him. It is even harder to admit to myself that I had lost him quite some time ago, somewhere along his way to prove to the world, that he can achieve all the material things life could offer. He just had forgotten that the reason why I loved him was because of that sweet little boy that was within him for as long as I could remember. That boy is dead now. Perhaps he never saw the friend in me. Perhaps I never know him at all. Funny that in life, when things go wrong, you are left in a discomforting abyss of perhaps.

And now I'm left with the painful memories of how he used to be, how we used to be. I know I'm being selfish, for wanting to cling on to that sweet memories so bad I became blinded by the fact that that boy was long dead. And it's just so hard to love a stranger who had possessed your friend. It's even harder to digest the fact that he was gone, longer than I had realized he had left me. Perhaps childhood friends should just remain during our childhood. At least it spares us the pain of watching them grow into complete strangers...

It's easier to mourn for the dead. But how do one mourn for a dead friend walking?