Questa è Enida

I just signed up with Facebook, and saw that my brother in-law was already on it. Didn’t see many familiar faces. Maybe one or two. No, honestly…only two. Azuradec and Ng Kim Chu. Had a smile to see the question on Facebook “How did you get to know Azuradec/Ng Kim Chu?” Good question, I thought. It sure brought me back to how I got to know these ladies. Azuradec is a friend of my best friend, Cik Nan. I have been back in Malaysia for over two years now but never got to see Azura here (and she has now relocated to Hong Kong. Oiii fun!). She visited me when I was in Oman. And oh, we were supposed to meet up in Kuching – at the Rainforest Festival – but I met her twin, Gina, instead. And Ng Kim Chu was one of my students in UKM back in the late 90’s.

Anyway, Facebook aside, I must say…it’s getting more and more challenging to keep friends at this age. Those who are married with children are busy with their family. The ladies are busy trying to be supermoms, and the guys are busy trying to chase their superkids, (or superbabe sitting at the next cubicle). Those who are still single are busy assuming that all married friends are busy with their lives and have no time for single friends. So in the end, nobody calls anybody and the next thing you hear…some of us have pushed up daisies.

And frankly speaking, it is not easy looking at old friends with your old new pair of eyes…assuming you are older and wiser, that is. As hard as accepting that people do change and like you, your friends (might) have changed – for the better. You kinda know their past and there is this empty space between then and now. You simply don’t know how to ‘fill in the blank’ anymore. You have no inkling as to what your friends have become, so you keep going back to what you remember best about them. And that memory, my friend, is extremely selective.

If you like these old friends you just get back in touch with…I mean, if you used to like them, then you’ll recall all the good things about them. How charming they were, how voluptuous they looked even in those baju kurung and a windbreaker top. Or perhaps how articulate and outspoken they used to be. But if you didn’t particularly like them, and hated their guts…oii, nothing can change that feeling now – or ever. Not even if they had become an ustazah with a PhD! You’d find yourself looking for flaws. And when you can’t, you’d start looking at their spouse – on whom you will find flaws. Trust me! I am an unmistakeably human too. Just like you.

All in all, whether I have said it or not, it’s not easy being a thirty-something. Not because we know what we want. But more because we know what we do NOT want. And as we grow (hopefully up…not just old), we actually see less of black and white and more gray. We give and we take, and whatever we can’t, we borrow and steal. And then we justify our own failures, renaming them, calling them lessons.

We tumble and we fall – flat on our face more often than not. But hey, we get up everytime.

Don’t we?