Monday, May 20, 2013

Beautiful Souls

I am blessed to have met some beautiful souls in my life.

How do I define them?
What they are not is perfect.
What they are is beautiful, flaws and all.

These people have touched me in ways no others have. Maybe it is just timing - meeting the right person at the right time, maybe it is circumstances you share, but perhaps it is just a simple inexplicable connection of souls. Some people grow on you, some people you just click with right away. There's no rules to meeting a beautiful soul.

Many people come through one's life and some stay and some leave.  "Everything happens for a reason" an old colleague used to say. I hated that saying.  It is like saying "It is what it is." Another pet peeve. I can't make people like me or stay my friend forever.  As you get to know me, you may despise my ways, you may get to know me better and wonder why I am the way I am.  Or, you may start to see what you like in me and hang on to that.  When people leave friendships, you realise what they were to you and what they represented.  When they remain, you have to also do the same.  Appreciate people for who they are and what they mean to us, every second, because tomorrow they may be gone.

I didn't know that I had known a beautiful soul until he passed away from a heart attack 3 weeks ago.  When I was in Form 1 or 7th grade, I had no real friends because I had skipped a year and was a new addition to a group of people who already grew up together. Sid took me under his wing.  He was sat next to me in class. He was confident and didn't give a hoot about befriending the new girl, who was also a schoolteacher's daughter. He didn't treat me extraordinarily specially. He treated me like I was a normal person. Sid liked me for me. He always gave me a hard time but I always knew he cared. We were close friends and classmates for 2 years. 

I remember he used to say when I would call him on the phone, that my voice never changed, he could always recognise my little-girl voice. While I doubt that is true, it was still sweet to hear. He used to ride a motorbike everywhere when we were in high school. On many an occasion when I would be walking home, he would offer me a ride home on his bike, a forbidden act in my mother's book.  I'd always take him up on it. And somehow he always had a spare helmet for me.

Every year I would return to Malaysia, I would wonder where he was.  I didn't call him every year because after so long, we'd just drifted apart. I would sometimes bump into him in town and it would be sublime but we didn't hang out any more.   Last year when I was back for summer, it was different.  A bunch of friends got together for some drinks and he came. It was like we were back in high school all over again.  The same jokes, the same teasing, the same attitudes towards each other. I realised then that I had really missed my friend.

His passing put me into a tailspin. I was grieving for many days without tears, just utter sadness. That song by Rihanna Stay, kept playing over and over on the radio too. In my grief I reached out to my husband but he simply acknowledged his passing and said, "What are we doing for dinner?". I clammed up, and I shrank away.  

As life would have it, I was bestowed another beautiful soul who would help to distract me and lift my spirits. And a best friend whose soul is beyond beauty. She took the opposite approach and told me to talk about him. I remember she held me and I cried over him.  I hadn't realised it but he was a hero to me.  He was someone who was brave and different from the crowd. I know his family will miss him terribly.  I wish there were something I could do to take away the pain but my pain is barely gone. I'm sure they feel it more intensely..

It is sheer therapy to write about stuff. I should do it more often. I want to focus on what makes me happy and not give up being myself for the sake of peace. I want to not be confined by convention, and I want to be free of ridiculous expectations put upon me by other people. I simply want to be myself.  Going forward that may be hard to do but I'm going to do my best. Not that I've hidden myself away, but we are always someone for some people and not really ourselves. Is it possible that if they really see who we are, they might bail on us? Would they really? After all, nobody's perfect.

And to my beautiful souls, who are now my friends.. Stay.
And for future beautiful souls who enter my life.. Welcome.
For the one who has left me.. See You.

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