First, I swear I didn’t do anything to make me look thin in the picture. This was taken in 1995 (I was thin that time and this is visual evidence) and I took a snap of this again just a few moments ago with my phone camera.

I am the one on the right and beside me is a dear friend. We’ve been friends for 20 years – together for only 3 and apart for 17 long years but we remain friends. The close knit kind, the kindred spirit one; like we never ever parted.

“Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies.” ~ Aristotle

We met in college. I was that social girl who would talk to everyone (but only because I already knew half of the class who went to the same high school with me) and she was that shy soul who begged the teacher to not let her introduce herself in front of the class. Everyone thought she was mute! We are total opposites and who knew we clicked so well, so perfectly?

“Friends are the family we chose for ourselves.”

I left when I went to Japan to study and we grew up, miles and miles apart from each other but we never failed to exchange handwritten letters and I have kept all those letters in a special box.

Now we live together. Yes, in the same house since the start of this year. When I picked her up from the airport, it was like we only saw each other the day before. A day before, not years and years.

If you ask me if there’s any one I can face any time of the day, in any type of clothing, without makeup or hair done – it is her. The one I can talk to who I know will listen to me no matter how non-sensical I become, will wait for me to finish my frantic lines of story telling till the very end, without judgement – it is her. She is that one person who patiently hears my woes about married life (even though she isn’t married and know nothing about my melodrama) and take the baby from me, willingly into her arms so I can brush my teeth at night.

“We’ll be Friends Forever, won’t we, Pooh?’ asked Piglet.
Even longer,’ Pooh answered.” ~ A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

It’s her birthday today and I am happy we get to celebrate it together again.