Reunion

I've been missing for the bulk of the year. Oops. I guess that's what final year does to you, or maybe I'm just fishing around for any excuse. I recently came back to Malaysia for a month before my graduation, and in the time I've been here, I've been lucky to spend lots of time with my family, catch up with a few friends, and eat my way into a food coma about ten times or so. That's not to say I haven't had a few petty disagreements with my parents - that part is inevitable. But for the most part, things have been going really well. I guess being away from home for so long kind of makes you love certain quirks more than usual, even though you thought they were annoying before.

I'm writing tonight out of love. Feel free to interpret that however you wish. I met up with three girls a few days ago. I've known them for a decade now, and it's actually insane how much has changed (I'm not exaggerating here). Despite that, many things have stayed the same. We've amassed 15 books containing our teenage angst and drama over the years, and poring over them during lunch was amazing in all sorts of ways. Many facepalm moments were had, mostly from embarrassment at our former selves. I would probably slap my 15-year old self if I met her now. In hindsight, we must have been a weird bunch of girls, always writing in those books and hastily passing them around. So exclusive and honestly, so damn angsty. What were we thinking back then? Were we not aware of the bigger things in life? I guess as young teenagers, our worlds revolved around ourselves and everything was a big deal. I'm glad we can see past that now and laugh at our mistakes.

At one point, we modelled ourselves after The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (a brilliant novel by Ann Brashares, by the way) and I think we were even intent on finding a garment that would fit all of us magically. That never happened, of course. We've had a fair amount of spats between ourselves, sometimes revolving around recurrent subjects, and occasionally not even speaking to each other for an extended period of time (we're talking months here). Yet somehow we always made our way back to each other, through various means over the years. I am especially grateful for that. Through them, I have learned that friendship doesn't mean talking to each other all the time and knowing what's going on in each other's lives. I've also learned that showing love takes shape in various forms, be it postcards or random but thoughtful Whatsapp messages. I suppose now, as young adults, we have formed our own version of The Sisterhood. Going over the books we wrote helped us go back to our roots and see how far we've come from our days in high school. Forgive me if I sound like a sentimental old hag, but I kind of do feel that way. Who knows where we'll be in the next ten years! I'm so excited to find out.