I start this post having absolutely no idea what it’s about. Let’s see where my pen takes me (figuratively speaking).
I’m feeling mighty emotional today and recently. One of my best friends just turned 26! Wow guys! We’ve known each other since I was 14 and they (we’re 3 in this best friend ship) were 15. Major epiphany! We’ve been friends for more than 10 years!!! How did that pass by without a celebration?!?
My friends have been through so much! And so has this friendship!
I still remember when ‘turtle’ jeopardized my little high school job and I called her a bitch. Jokingly I said. But deep down I knew I was serious. Not my proudest moment.
I’m sitting here thinking of a time when ‘horse’ and I were at odds. But let’s be honest ‘turle’ has always been the wild card in this friendship loool.
But I will never forget how my friendship with Horse started. When I walked into my grade 10 Religion class at a new school after only 1 year of being in Canada. I was nervous, I was anxious, and I was so sad that I had been forced to leave my previous school. But she invited me in. I think of that girl sometimes. How clueless I was at that time of the significance that she would come to hold in my life. I had no clue then, that I would be lying here YEARS later, having shared 11 birthdays, one significant death, one amazing wedding, one baby, countless births, way-more-than-necessary boyfriends, secrets, truths and everything in between.
Our friendship is both un- explicable and explicable at the same time. They were both born 12,000 kms from me in the Philippines with quite different cultures. But, wow, the similarities you share when your parents leave the home you’ve always known and board that ‘boat’ to provide you a better life. We are no strangers to parental sacrifices and mighty expectations. No strangers to “Dont you dare put me in a nursing home” and not even wanting to. Instead, our number-one goal is always to make sure they’re comfortable. But why would I, an African girl, Cameroonian to be exact, with all the similarities I could share with the Black girls in school, not to talk of the African girls in school, meet, click, and cling on to these two Philipino girls when they also had several other options. This friendship is just bizarre! Another thing we share in common; our moms are our world and our dads need our protection. The relationship between a mother and her daughter is soo sensitive, but between a dad and his daughter, its just PRICELESS.
I love you both with a love I can’t explain and I promise to steward this God-given gift into something that will last a lifetime by God’s grace.
To my young readers and to my younger self, some of those relationships you’re making now will define your future. Choose them well! And even better, treat them well.
If you know me, please leave a comment guessing which one is Horse and which one is Turtle.
Until next time,
(Insert signature here 😂)
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