Let’s Be Friends!
Do you remember how you met your very first friend? I do, even though it’s been over two decades and I was maybe three or four years old at the time. I didn’t really have friends before that, for reasons you all might already know.
do you need a friend?
My very first friend was the daughter of my father’s partner. Him and her have not been an item in ages, but the relationship has sort of lingered on as a platonic friendship. Me and the daughter, though, became friends and would see each other several times over the years. She was three years older than me, automatically a lot cooler than me. She was a sweet girl, very kind and accepting, even though I was a total fucking weirdo as a Kid – she still accepted me and spent time with me. You know, like a proper friend should.
But what about those other types of Friends? Do you remember the first time you came across someone like that? I do, but that is maybe due to the fact that I have met a lot of these people and each of them has left their fingerprints on the constellation of my mind. They are easy to identify like that.
I met my very first Friend when I was around five or six years old, around a year older. Me and my mom had just moved to a different town, our home was a row house in the middle of this massive forest located around the edges of the town. The natural scenery and the tiny village with the population of a few hundred is a place people from all around the world come to see, to bask in the glory of Finnish lakes and pine trees.
My Friend was living in that village, too, across the road to my row house complex. She was a year older than me, a bit cooler than me but not as cool as my first friend. She was pretty, funny, and witty, I had so much fun playing with her. But she got me into major trouble multiple times – enough for my lenient mother to ground me at least for two weeks.
“Are you sure she’s really a good friend for you?” I remember my mom asking me once. The conversation is a hazy memory for me, but what I do recall is feeling confused. I didn’t understand what mom meant by that question. What is a good friend? Are there friends who are not good? How do I tell them apart?
“I don’t know, mom… But she’s my only friend here.”
The confusion I felt then would stick with me for the following ten years. At the age of 11, I would still not be able to tell friends and Friends apart. Because nobody told me how to do that. I was expected to just get it, figure it out on my own, even when there were several indicators of me just not being able to do it. Somehow, the responsibility always fell back on my own shoulders.
That I was always just supposed to understand that the scarf around their neck was there to hide something they didn’t want me to see – even when that scarf was colored in my favorite colors.
Writing poems,
ichigonya
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