When you’re dancing with life and death, reflection kicks in.
Most of this year, Ive been going through memories from my childhood, high school years, the friends I kept and the friends I lost, the family members that remain and the ones that passed. My achievements, the things I delayed doing, the opportunities I didn’t take and the ones I thought I had longer to action.
It’s a series of memories, regrets, realisations, lessons all swirling around inside me.
Even watching a movie can trigger more. sometimes the character in a movie can make you recall a memory and then it begins again.
I had a friend in high school- let’s call her G.
G was mature. She saw things differently. She had a vision of who she wanted to be and she went for it. G didn’t have an illness as a kid and wasn’t told she was lucky she didn’t die at 5, like I did, she had the courage and the support at home to be whoever she dreamt of being.
Months have passed and G has been constantly on my mind. I needed to tell G things. I needed to clear up whatever happened that could be the reason we no longer speak today. I needed to appolagise for being immature and not the friend she needed but that I need now.
I wrote G’s email several times. I mentally wrote it in the shower, as I laid in hospital, sometimes as I ate. Her email was rewritten so many times it began driving me insane.
How was I going to write to G? I didn’t even have her email or her number. Should I send a letter in the post to her childhood home? Do her parents still live there? I searched for G everywhere online. She is impossible to find. She doesn’t have social media- typical G, she was never a fan of social media. I found her workplace, but was she still working there?
I was too afraid to call the possible workplace, or her parents home number. What if G wasn’t dotting her I’s and crossing her t’s? What if she didn’t want to reconnect and told me to get lost? I didn’t even recall why we no longer speak.
Late one night I sat in-front of the computer and began typing.
I wrote my sorry. I wrote the things I felt she needed to hear from me. See, G doesn’t know I’m not the person I was before. G doesn’t know I now know things she knew so long ago. G also didn’t know I was genuinely sorry for judging her because she was thinking about things I couldn’t comprehend back then.
Funny how once the email was ready to send, I found G’s email address from 2011 in my sent history. We last communicated in 2011!!
At 1am, I hit send. Nervous, but relieved that I would no longer be writing G’s email most days. But now I had to wait instead.
In the email I added a brief update on my current life. 3 sentences. The majority of the email to her was explaining how I didn’t realise what I had and how I didn’t understand her. She spoke butterfly and I was speaking caterpillar.
The next morning I checked my email and G replied!!! I was so grateful I didn’t have to wait days for the reply.
I read the email twice. Then a third time. Then I had to leave the table where I was eating breakfast with my parents nearby and I sobbed.
I know I refer to lots of tears these days, but this email brang tears of joy, tears of gratefulness, tears of mixed feelings.
G wrote back. She filled me in briefly on her current life. She also told me that life got busy and we drifted. No ill feelings or bad memories on her end. Life simply got busy. G also told me that I didn’t need to appolagise and she wasnt holding onto anything. She was happy to hear from me.
I am able to have another thing sorted out before the operation. Maybe G and I will be friends again in my new chapter.
Now that I was able to write my sorry to G, I have an opposite letter to write to someone. Let’s call her M.
Until next time
Oxygen4theJourney 