I promised myself not to think about this anymore, ever since certain revelations were made to me a few months back. But I was cleaning my room last week and was wiping the inch-thick dust on my shelves (it HAS been months), when I picked up this small heart-shaped photo frame with a photo of me, beaming in front of my cake, on my 5th birthday.
The subject of my spillage is not the photo…though I do wonder where the sweetie pie has gone to ha ha. It’s the frame, about 6 cm across, with a delicate pink flower pattern against a white border, cast in metal. A gift from a close friend when I was fourteen. She meant a lot to me those days. I was like a misfit in a secondary school not of my choice, where I felt a dunce in a class with scholars. She was the first to speak to me and by the middle of secondary one, we got closer.
Years went by through the four years and later on we went to the same college though in different courses. Many things happened and we had our ups and downs but I guess I was never really prepared for the demise of our relationship. She disappeared on me and my other friends after we finished college. Without warning, without notice (then again who ever gives that?), she removed herself from our lives. I went on with mine. As best as one could, without a sense of closure or lucid explanations. I had conjectures of my own. I had my theories. However over the years, I had long given up the need to know.
Then, this once mused upon knowledge, surfaced itself when a common friend broached the topic to her. It was simultaneously gratifying and disconcerting to find out that I was partly accurate in my guesses. I was a part of a phase in her life that she needed to cut off. Our lives were taking us on different paths. That was it.
It hurt a little for a few days. I felt…used and foolish to have thought that a friendship I once valued was merely a fleeting period of another person’s life, something to be discarded after it had run its course.
There are still many things I do not know; about human nature and relationships. Perhaps, I have yet to discover more. Perhaps, I should wise-up and toss this overly-sentimental part of me away.
So I did what I should have done fifteen years ago.
I threw out that photo-frame.
It was about time I phased it out of my life.
