Friends To Strangers

I remember the first friend I had. The memory is vague, distant, long lost in the sea of nerves and neurons that make up my brain.  

It is a bit mystifying. The way friendships dissolve like salt in water, either adding flavor or saltiness, or perhaps a bit of both.  

My first friend wasn't chosen for any specific reason. We were kids, tiny and three. One minute I was toddling around my mother's kitchen, jumping into the tall containers of water that sat by the wall.  

My mother would trek a very long distance, with a container almost double her weight to get water and then would trek back to see her three year old, half immersed in a tall drum of water, giggling happily.  

I imagine it must have been a bittersweet moment for her. She had suffered to fetch every drop and yet I splashed around, wasting them without a care in the world.  

I want to be like that again- Not to see the pure look of pain on my mother's face as I splashed her hard work to the kitchen floor,- to see the world behind untouched eyes. To be free of burdens, social lies and designs.  

It was with untouched eyes that I had chosen my first friend.  

Or perhaps she had chosen me. We would never know. I couldn't even remember her name. All I had as a reminder of who she was, how close we must have been was a photo.  

We stood side by side. She smiled widely, staring right at the camera while I snobbishly glared, with my nose raised up.  

But I held her hand.  

It must have been at a school party of some sort. There was a boy standing close by. Not so close that he would be part of the friendship but close enough that he would be part of the picture. He smiled brightly too.  

Sometimes, when I tried to relieve the moments that I had lived but couldn't recall, I would imagine that he was her brother and I must have chased him off and yet the arrogant kid had stuck around anyway. 

The friend I had after her was forged through rivalry. It wasn't like I wasn't social growing up. I was. In Grade four, I ruled the class and had my personal entourage announce to the whole class that Mitchel was mine. So yeah, I was social.  

Mother however would say I was more of a two person kind of friendship. I could be friendly with anyone, but close to just one. If she were to have her way, she would prefer I was a friend to none. All my friendships did was cause her trouble.  

Anyway, my second friend, I could remember vividly. We had started out as rivals. If I didn't come out top of the class, she would and I would get so mad about it and try to ostracize her from everyone.  

The world slowly had colors and they were black or white. She was either my enemy or my friend, no in betweens.  

Somehow, I couldn't remember just how, the lines blurred. We grew closer and she earned the title 'Best friend'. Our parents met at a school party and they became friends.  

Or so I'd like to believe.  

Some ten to twelve years later, my mother would rant in my ears about my best friend's father being a lousy drunk who lived off his wife. All he did was gamble away whatever little money they had, and put his family in tight spots. 

I didn't know that! If we were to judge from my memories, my best friend's dad was perfect. He had a mustache that made him look Indian and we liked to pull at it. He always had a sweet in his pocket for us and that was all that mattered back then.  

Nothing else existed beyond what I wanted, what I knew, what I saw and what I felt.  

But then life certainly knew how to play dirty. It came with a mess called puberty.  

The next friend I had was in grade five. We had moved. I had to change schools. I was separated from my best friend and her sweet giving father, never to see her until four years later, while I walked down the streets. Her father's car would park right beside me and she would yell my name, waving at me.  

Grade five had to be my most versatile year yet. I had a couple of friends and I dropped them like hot potatoes the minute they did something irredeemable- the minute they got me in trouble.  

Even with my flair for the dramatics, I was not crazy. I stuck to rules, I obeyed them as if my life depended on it. The world to me was an adult world, and until you were twenty one and could drink responsibly like all the ads said, you had to follow whatever rules were laid down by the adults.  

My third friend was a girl two years older than I was and apparently, she thought she was two years wiser as well. She knew things that I didn't. She knew how to knit a purse. How to make cakes from mashing cookies and candies together. And how to start a business.  

That was a lot for an eleven year old and she knew it all.  

I loved being her friend- I could remember marching proudly beside her, my arm interlocked with hers. I was friends with those she deemed worthy and enemies with all those who weren't.  

Until she lied to my face and got me in trouble with my mother.  

That was the first event that put a spot of gray in my black and white world. There were friends, there were enemies and then there were people who were neither but just as terrifying. It seemed that every friendship after her was headed for the rocks.  

I became friends with twin sisters who claimed to be so poor, they couldn't afford lunch. I would sneak my clothes and dresses to school so they would have something to wear. When my mother found out, she got angry and tried to stop me. I told her she was not being a good disciple of the Lord. 

Turned out the twins weren't good disciples of the Lord either. They'd stolen my brand new cell phone. A tiny rectangular Motorola with keypads that made the loveliest noise.  

After them, very briefly, came a Catholic girl who looked lonely in class. I was lonely too. I had been betrayed twice and was licking my wounds, so like birds of a feather, I had gravitated towards her. 

She didn't betray me. At least not in grade five. She waited three years before knifing me in the back by making the boy I liked, like her in return. Was I being petty? I think not.   

In middle school I met my second best friend. We had to have sprouted from the same mind. We loved reading books, we loved the same music- Anything Celine Dion sang and we had the same fantasy of having our first kiss with a man who was heavily possessed by his desire for us. I blame the Harlequin books. They set me up for a real shocker in my twenties.

And like what had happened with my first best friend, I was moved to another school.  

There were many more friends after her, but all paled in comparison to her. We had all grown apart anyways. I had seen a handful of these friends I used to have and we had simply stood before each other, gazing awkwardly. One time we used to have a lot to say to each other.  

Now though, life had happened and the world wasn't as simple as black and white anymore. There were a lot of gray areas, defining who were, breaking what we thought we knew about ourselves apart.  

And my mother was right, all my friends did was cause her trouble. 

I would do well to remind her of that whenever she comes around, opening up my blinds, yelling at me to "go out there and socialize."