It's a rainy morning. Been a while since I've experienced a long midnight rain in Singapore. Yesterday MW messaged me out of the blue, asking how I was. As usual, her replies were slow and lacked the connection that I desired. So then it abruptly ended with her needing to go back to work. It made me start to think, her suggestions to improve my mood were banal at best, and completely disconnected from what I am feeling. It was an extremely childish way of telling me to feel okay without the understanding of why I felt terrible in the first place. I have no idea if it is because she just isn't sharp enough to detect that, or she just cannot be bothered enough to try understanding me.

Let's take the second reason then, because there is nothing to discuss on the first reason. Granted, I don't have a complete picture of what is going on with her life, and how she manages her work for her dad amongst other things. But it led me to think in retrospect, so this person tells me she is really busy with her life and ends up tired every night so she has no time to meet up with me, and her messages to me take a very long time. Yet she could (at that time) start chatting so much with some random cute half-Indian guy on WhatsApp, can go out with other friends even when she tells me she has no time for me. That makes me feel left out and lonely. Lonely because someone so close to me can choose not to bother with my current condition and do other things that excite or appeal to her instead. Of course, others might not see it that way because maybe she has other ways of expressing her affections to her friends, just that they aren't in tandem with mine, but I digress.

The thought that came to me was the dynamics of friendships and relationships. True to everything, friendships and relationships evolve, and people's good friends and best friends are dynamic too (to an extent). It made me think of my friendship with David and Haikal. Truth to be told, I no longer feel as close to them as I was back in secondary school. No doubt our personalities are different, and non-complementary at best, and that we have vastly different interests and priorities in life. It is a sign of the change in the depth of the friendship, no more are they best friends, because they simply aren't complementary to me as in the past. But with the long history that we have, definitely still close friends. So then I think of MW and of dJ, four years of friendship in university. Where then do they rank in terms of closeness to me?

I don't deny that I currently place MW as my closest friend, and I expect an extremely high level of trust, responsiveness, and care back from her. I place her above dJ, above David and Haikal. And yet I don't get my required reciprocation. So the bottom line becomes this, where does she place me and rank me in terms of closeness? What does it take for someone to have a best friend, and one at the level where they are mutually (or almost mutually) best friends of each other? Isn't that now a rarity? Or perhaps the term 'best friends' is a misnomer. Perhaps it doesn't exist in this earthly realm.

What am I? Do I not have any best friends at all? Do I not even have any really close friends who share that same mutual level of closeness with me? It seems ultimately I am still a lonely person in this world, with no one to truly consider me as important as I consider them, given that my value system lies in these precious human bonds which I consider sacred. Will no one consider it sacred like I do?

Maybe the only best Friend I have is Jesus. It is a comforting thought, but I'd really like to have someone to treat me as importantly as I treat them. || posted by Kuan Hui