For My

Consider these to be prerequisites of a best-est best friend:

She is most probably somebody whom you’ve known for the longest amount of time—say, 16 years—long enough for a child to have finished high school. If friendship that has lasted for 16 years is a child then, you’ve probably seen it through its toddler years, teething and all, to kindergarten with its petty fights over spilled milk, all through grade school amidst alone-times and just-us-times. A good, long enough time to say: I know this child’s potential because I’ve seen her fall and watched her mature.

You have grown to like her because she always picked on your brains—by creating discourse on the latest showbiz tidbit she happened upon a website or by talking with the same nationalistic pride as you do when it comes to your country’s state of affairs. Together you heaved a huge sigh of relief at the news that your latest battery of lab test has shown up pretty good numbers or together laughed a mean kind of laugh when you assert how extremely beautiful—in all its literal and figurative sense—you both are.

Surely she ought to know your darkest secrets and smell your deepest fears. She can throw you a whole world of what-ifs—the answers to which she already knows yet she is still surprised when you chew out your response. She provides the soundest piece of advice, which you may freely choose to take or not heed, knowing she will love you nonetheless.

She is one who goes AWOL on you for a year with you thinking she has probably finally gone weary of hearing you talk about the D’s—your weird cycle of drama, depression and derangement. But then again, you ring her up one fine day to find out it wasn’t that at all, it’s just that she was busy and that time flew and she was really sorry and can you meet over the weekend. And you were ok about it, you laugh yourself silly with relief, knock your head three times and think, geez…what took me so long.

The only thing between you is time and distance. You miss her but are assured she will go whatever distance just to see you then kiss you goodbye because that’s really all the time both of you have.

She will talk you into anything and will give you anything without you even needing to talk. And while she may not need to move mountains for you because you don’t really expect her to, she might very well be the mountain—a point of reference in the map of your life—go wandering then if you must, this mountain of yours will always be there.

Lucky, lucky you, Dee. You, lucky you.

***

Pictured: Twins, a watercolor illustration