What made us us?

We met at the age of two or three, I have known you for life as long as my memories could consolidate solidly and recall. I always introduce you as my first companion in life to others, be them newcomers in my life or people I have known for decades, with sheer memories of how we played skipping rope in the podium of our residential unit, and how we went to the same schools with each other until the age of nine. There are many trivialities that I can recall, like how I envied you making new friends and leaving me behind when we were kids at school. You wore a happy face with those new girls you met at the bright-green-hued badminton court. I regretted it so much, that I isolated myself from you once and you were courageous to reconnect and reencounter me with clemency and forgiveness. You taught me how to confront conflicts and resolve them. I also used to borrow your new shiny gadget of the walkie-talkie you had, and we stayed connected in the building we lived in, between 19th and 9th floor. Did you own the pinkish one while I had the black version? Do you also remember that I started learning piano at a young age, just like you, and when I once played a tune at your place on your glazed wooden YAMAHA, you told me boldly that I’m not a material for piano. The memory of that statement is still afresh, I might have felt defeated but not anymore, because not having the talent merely means the lack of it without shame. And I’ve grown to an age that I’m starting to aware of it fully. What I’m made for, and what I’m not. And you somehow mirrored it, you showed me over time, what I’m meant to be, and who I shall not become.

We used to wear a similar pair of glasses and people called us sisters, in terms of biology. We even share some similar moles at a similar spot on our faces. You might not have recognised how much I hated and detested my moles when I was younger, I cried at night and wished upon the stars that all of my moles would just vanish overnight. I associated having moles and these unwanted dark spots with ugliness. While after many years we’ve witnessed what time has done to us, I now see my moles as constellations. I imagined putting lines across them and joining the dots, they would somehow become horoscopes on my sensitive skin and a morphing body. The shape would do it justice. I wonder if you have ever thought of them metaphorically, like how I do?

I still see childish faces that we were once in. I see how we have changed and evolved over time and how we haven’t.

Although I entitle you as the first and primal friend of mine, I still fail to name you and your significance in my life thoroughly. You see justice in my crime and deviance, my inactions, indulgence and hesitations; you would tell me they belong to the process of growth. You tolerate my immaturity, flaws, and indecisiveness, and you see them as part of imperfection that we all glide and meander through. More importantly you see the beauty in me, trusting my instincts, intuitions, and creations. You root for me no matter what. I’m not romanticising the scene, but this is the truth, as if truth ever exists. You accept me from head to toe. You set me free at all times, high and low tides. You wish me liberty, dignity and lightness at heart. You give me everything you can offer. What made us us? How on earth would that be possible? I would stop saying its due to luck, luck might have been an ingredient and component, it might have driven us to tie the knots and weave the patterns in lives, but it’s more than that. What would you say we’re made up of?

It might have been a while that you last took a star ferry in Hong Kong. I took the ferry couple weeks ago to cross the narrowing harbour, when it was approaching the pier, the sailor in navy uniform decorated with the star symbols on their shoulders, threw a mooring rope and prepared to anchor the ferry. I thought of us, how we take turn and swap roles, sometimes with one being the sailor and with another one being the iron bollard stationed at the pier. Or some other time we would just be the passengers, sailing through the waves and wiry pulses.

You have kept me alive, literally and analogically; explicitly and implicitly. And I should give it a pause of being nostalgic too, looking back is remedial but looking forward drives us towards a greater end. We might only share two to three more intervals of a time span of 28 years, it is saddening when you start seeing it mathematically. Life is so short we have to hold each other dearly. We will welcome our years and eras. You have my words.

I hope you partially grow up and partially remain innocent, as if a new-born. You have me and your world. Stay immersed in it. You shine and glow in every page of life and I’m going to witness it all for you.

Happy birthday love.