When I was young, I was led to believe that there was something wrong with me.
Teachers said it.
Parents said it.
Classmates said it.
And one day, even my best friend said it.
I was made to attend this social event, clinging to the hope that maybe, if I tried hard enough, I could finally learn to be normal. To fix whatever was wrong with me.
But after forcing myself through it, all it showed me was how different I was. That no matter what I did, I would never fit in.
So I gave up.
I couldn’t be the person society expected me to be.
I believed I was broken, and meant to stay that way. From then on, I believed that I was meant to be alone.
When I moved on to a new phase of life, for a while, things seemed different. I even managed to make new friends. It was a fresh beginning.
While I was with my new group of friends, I noticed them pointing and making fun of someone for his unusual behavior. Being rather shy myself, I never initiated conversations, so I don’t know what came over me. Maybe it was the way he stood all alone, not having anyone to talk to. Or maybe I saw myself in him.
I uttered, “He just needs time,” a little louder than I expected.
Then I walked away from this friend group, and went over to him, and without really knowing why, I decided to be his friend.
I don’t think he ever needed me. Sure, he didn’t have anyone, but I saw him as the kind of independent person who was fully capable of navigating life all by himself. Perhaps I was just being annoying, but somehow I decided to talk to him. I was a pretty awkward person, so I expected him to push me away, or myself to pull away. But somehow, even though we were two completely different people, we would eventually grow close.
I am a slow eater.
With most friends, this made me feel awkward. I’d be sitting there while everyone else is finished with their meals, and I often felt the pressure from them waiting for me to finish.
But he never made me feel that way. He never rushed me. He stuck around, not once making me feel out of place or that I was an inconvenience.
Over time, small things happened.
He was usually this serious, reserved person who barely said much. While I was often the goofy, silly one. But one day, as I was fooling around, he actually joined me and even started cracking sarcastic jokes – not at my expense, but with me. It was the first time I saw him let loose, displaying a side of him I never saw with anyone else.
In my free time, I drew comics – little stories, sketches and jokes inspired by daily life.
Sometimes, I’d show them to him. He would read them intently. Usually he didn’t react, but occasionally he’d smile, and somehow that was enough to make me happy.
For the first time, a thought I never imagined was possible crept in. I began to feel that… maybe I wasn’t broken after all.
I don’t know if I found him, or he found me.
All my life, I felt like an alien. I wanted to disappear.
But maybe what I really wanted…
was to be found.
For the first time, I was free of worry. Even if the world judged me, I had a friend who wouldn’t. I’ve never forgotten that feeling.
One day, we had to decide whether to attend a character-building course. The kind that made me uneasy.
I was reluctant. It reminded me too much of what I had gone through before. I hesitated, but when I looked at him, I could see that he really wanted to go. This was important to him, for reasons I would only discover a long time later.
In the end, I steadied myself and chose to join him.
The course seemed okay at first. I could see him having fun. But as it went on, my discomfort grew. Bit by bit, I noticed my friend beginning to change.
I noticed him starting to hang around questionable people – people whose character he previously called out and stayed away from. I remember this one time when he chose to sit with them instead of with me. It stung a little, but perhaps he wanted to make new friends. And of course, that was cool. I should have been happy.
Still, a part of me felt left behind, like I was watching something quietly slip away.
Throughout the course, it was suffocating, pretending to be this ‘expected’ version of myself – someone I was not. So when finally, the course ended, I was relieved. I was glad to finally be able to be myself, return to our normal lives, and perhaps without external judgement, we could be the friends we once were. I looked forward to it more than anything.
Yet something felt off. Sometimes he would walk past me without dropping a ‘hi’. He seemed a little more cold and distant. I sort of understood – he had an ‘image’ to uphold with his friends, and I was a goofy and quirky person that contrasted his personality. I could see how he might find this side of me annoying.
Despite that, I continued to remain cheerful. I drew a special comic, something I hadn’t done in a while. We both always took the same bus home, so I thought, perhaps when it was just us, he could be himself. I waited until the end of the day, when it was just the two of us alone, to share it with him.
I took it out and held it in front of him, face beaming with anticipation.
“Hey, I just drew this. Wanna take a look?” I asked eagerly, unable to contain my excitement.
He looked away.
Not a word or a glance.
Like I wasn’t even there.
I held it out for a few seconds more before lowering my hand and retracting it.
Maybe he was tired, I told myself.
Still, I didn’t give up. One day, I overheard him talking about me. If I hadn’t listened myself, I wouldn’t have believed it. These were not things one would say about their friend.
That was when I knew.
The friend who laughed with me. The one who stayed.
He was gone.
So I stopped.
Stopped trying to reach out.
And… I also stopped drawing comics.
That was the end of the story. Or so I thought.
Months passed. However sad I was at first, I eventually recovered. I made new friends, and he… he had his new group too.
One day, I was going home, taking the same bus I always had. Normally, he takes the same bus too, but he would sit at the back and me in front. We both always sat apart. However that day, as I was alighting. I noticed that he had sat directly behind me all along, a far cry from his usual sitting place.
It surprised me. I knew him well enough to sense something. It was almost like he wanted to tell me something.
But I never asked.
And he never said.
Time flew, and it was now one week to graduation. We were all about to move on to a new phase of life. I was sentimental, given everything that had happened, but perhaps some things in life were meant to remain broken.
There was this final team activity. Unfortunately, all my friends were absent, so I didn’t have anyone to partner with. I knew he had his group of friends, so he already had a team. I sat alone while waiting for everyone else to pair up.
When the instructor asked who still had no partner, I raised my hand.
And then, to my surprise, just behind me, he raised his hand too.
So we grouped together for the team activity.
It was tense at first, neither of us speaking. During the activity, I made a mistake at one point and without really thinking, I made a joke about it. Surprisingly, he responded. Slowly, we began talking. When lunch came, he sat with me – for the first time in a long time.
When we finally graduated, we took the bus home together. This time, he sat with me. I remember how heavily it poured that day. The cold blurred the windows and the bus was empty, save for the two of us.
I reached into my bag, pulling out a partially drawn comic, the last one I ever drew, and shared it with him. I had also written something, a message I crafted for him that was meant to go with the comic, but at the last minute, I was too ashamed to share it, and kept it hidden in my bag. I thought he would find it cringy.
As we bid each other farewell, I was hopeful that this would not be the last time we would see each other. He would be abroad for awhile, but he would return. His final words to me were “Take care”.
I didn’t know it then, but that was the last time we’d ever speak face to face.
I guess…
everyone has a last day with you.
And you won’t know when it’ll be.
Every once in a while, I would write him stories. And he would respond.
Sometimes, months would pass without a message between us.
But somehow, whenever we spoke again, it felt like no time had passed at all. We could always pick up the conversation like we had just left it the day before.
One day, the messages from him stopped. I would wait weeks before sending a message, figuring he was busy with ‘life stuff’. But the silence ensued.
Still, every year, I would wish him happy birthday and invite him out for a meal if he ever wanted.
But every year, there was no response.
Even though I would make new friends, I never met someone like him again. And honestly, I miss the feeling of having someone who accepted me exactly as I was.
On some nights, when it’s 3am and I toss and turn in bed, I still think back.
It stings not knowing, because it makes you wonder:
Was I not a good enough friend?
If I had checked in with him more often, would he have shared the difficulties he was facing, or had I checked in too much and became too bothersome to keep as a friend.
For a long while, I tried to chase the answer. At one point, I came so close to getting it. The answer was just a click away. But at the last moment, I hesitated. I realized I didn’t want to know – because no matter what the answer was, I think it might not be a happy one. So I made the cowardly move, choosing avoidance.
At the beginning of the story, I shared that I felt out of place, and I lived all my life believing I needed to be fixed.
But he never made me feel that way. Somehow, he understood my quirks.
While everyone else was trying to change me, he made me feel okay to just be… me.
I was reminded of a particular moment a long time ago. I had done something embarrassing in front of a big group of people and they were all laughing at me. I was all dusty, so I slipped away to the toilet to clean up. I waited there, making sure to only go out after everyone outside had dispersed to the canteen.
Just when I thought everyone was gone… I stepped out. To my surprise, he stood there, waiting for me. He didn’t say anything, didn’t make a big deal out of it. Without a word, he accompanied me to the canteen.
When I grabbed my food, I made sure to sit far away from everyone else to avoid their stares and mocking.
He chose to sit with me, away from the group. As I ate in silence, I could see from the corner of my eye someone heading toward me, eager to make fun of my plight. I braced myself for what was to come.
Before I could react, my friend stood up. He said something, I don’t even remember what, but whatever it was, it left the bully stunned and speechless. He walked away, while my friend sat back down with me. I was still lost in the moment, but even though I never reacted, I never forgot what he did for me.
After all these years, I wish that I could tell him now, how much I appreciate him standing up for me. This was one of the things I had written in the message I never sent to him. I thought he would find it cheesy.
One special thing about this friendship was how easily we could shift topics.
One moment, we would be cracking jokes in some light-hearted conversation. The next, we’d dive into a serious topic.
My favourite moments with him were discussing philosophical stuff, and one of the topics was passion. This was amongst one of the last things we shared in our late night conversations.
I was at a point where I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. I shared that I wanted to make games, but that I had been told it wasn’t realistic.
In a pragmatic society, this wasn’t surprising. One of my own friends told me:
“Making games? You’re not going to earn much. You’ll be working long hours and your passion exploited.”
But, when I spoke to him that day, he didn’t say any of that.
He also didn’t tell me the idealistic opposite, that I should just chase my dreams and that it’ll all work out.
Instead, he had this to say to me.
He paused for a long while before saying:
“If making games is genuinely what makes you happy, do it.”
“Because even if you get successful doing something else, that happiness will only be partial.”
“You’ll always be wondering… what if you had chased your dreams?”
He understood what my dreams meant to me, and how much it mattered. No one else had ever told me that.
It took me years, but I ended up following my dream. I now make games played by over a million players around the world.
And it’s nights like these that I just wish he were around, so that I could tell him:
Hey, guess what?
I did it.
I followed my dreams.
I just wish you were around.
So you could see how it turned out.
One of my last messages to him is asking if he would like to have a meal together, at our usual spot. I imagine we would order our favourite dishes and poke fun at each other’s tastes, amongst other inside jokes.
On some mornings – and maybe it’s a lost cause – but I’d wish so hard that I’d wake up, look at my phone and see a message from him:
“I’ll be there“.
I love science fiction, so the idea of parallel universes and alternate realities fascinates me.
Sometimes, late at night, I imagine there’s a version of this world – a parallel universe – where things turned out differently.
In that world, maybe we never drifted.
Maybe things turned out differently. Like maybe I sent a message when it was needed, or you reached out and I listened.
Maybe in that universe, I handed you the comic and the message.
Maybe there, we met up, shared that meal, and laughed again.
And maybe, just maybe…
I get to tell you that I followed my dream.
And depending on our conversation, you’d say something sarcastic like:
“Took you long enough.”
Or maybe something sentimental, like:
“I knew you’d do it.”
I don’t know if that world exists.
But some nights, I like to believe in it.
Because in that world,
I didn’t lose an awesome friend.
“Sometimes you think you want to disappear, but all you really want is to be found.“