Round One of this CNY's spring-cleaning started a few afternoons ago. It's an annual ritual that I go through the stuff in my drawers/cupboards whenever I get the order from Mumsy to "clean up the pig-sty that is your (mine) room" and this will be that one time (each year, excluding the last one) when I'll actually be looking at momentos; notes and letters, specifically, from my secondary school. Reading the now-faded words on the slightly dog-eared cards and slips of paper (result of trying to keep everything in a tiny box) always brings back flashes of the long-past secondary school days; folding-in instead of tucking-in shirts during morning assemblies, scurrying down from classrooms as soon as we hear William Tell playing over the speakers, pulling socks as high as we can (since ankle socks were not allowed), periods of time where we were crazy busy completing 10-year-series questions and preparing ourselves for the big O's, or where I was let down by a boy for the first time in my life.
These handwritten notes never fail to remind me that time - minutes, days, weeks and years, is always creeping by us silently and that I'm getting older with each annual CNY spring-cleaning. In recent times (where I appear to be more outgoing), these slips of scented paper have also started to remind me of the girly shyness and long-lost innocence I used to have back there. It's this very same type of naivety that makes me cringe (real bad) these days if I should so allow myself to think that I possess it now; in fact, I'm cringing while thinking about the notes that I might have written in response to notes that I've stumbled upon here.
Anyway, digress aside, I received a good number of hand-written notes (on postcards and scented letter paper) from a close friend from secondary school, lm. We used to confide in each other all the time about problems that were faced, gave each other words of encouragement when the O-levels preparation got tough or when we sensed that the other was feeling down.
But, as you might have guessed how this is going to turn out, after going onto the respective paths that we've chosen following the Os (me TP while she stayed on in NYJC), we gradually lost touch as time went by. I can't remember if it was a result of our differing schedules, or thatwe I simply just couldn't be bothered enough to keep in contact. From meeting up once every 3 months, it dwindled to once every 6 months, and eventually, it became an annual event of sorts. Nowadays, we still talk when we meet up and everything is fine, though we're just not as intimate as we used to be back in secondary school. And we're probably never going to be heading in that direction anytime soon, I guess.
Our relationship is an important reminder to me that friendship, like many other things in life, needs maintenance and effort to work. As we trudge along in life trying to fill new shoes, priorities may change, more people will enter our lives; something as simple as a lack of initiative (to ask each other out) and there you have it, 'friends' can sometimes be expendable too. It's sad, and regrettable but that's just the way things roll; like how lovers turn to strangers or how close friends can turn to mere acquaintances over extended periods of not keeping in touch.
These handwritten notes never fail to remind me that time - minutes, days, weeks and years, is always creeping by us silently and that I'm getting older with each annual CNY spring-cleaning. In recent times (where I appear to be more outgoing), these slips of scented paper have also started to remind me of the girly shyness and long-lost innocence I used to have back there. It's this very same type of naivety that makes me cringe (real bad) these days if I should so allow myself to think that I possess it now; in fact, I'm cringing while thinking about the notes that I might have written in response to notes that I've stumbled upon here.
Anyway, digress aside, I received a good number of hand-written notes (on postcards and scented letter paper) from a close friend from secondary school, lm. We used to confide in each other all the time about problems that were faced, gave each other words of encouragement when the O-levels preparation got tough or when we sensed that the other was feeling down.
But, as you might have guessed how this is going to turn out, after going onto the respective paths that we've chosen following the Os (me TP while she stayed on in NYJC), we gradually lost touch as time went by. I can't remember if it was a result of our differing schedules, or that
Our relationship is an important reminder to me that friendship, like many other things in life, needs maintenance and effort to work. As we trudge along in life trying to fill new shoes, priorities may change, more people will enter our lives; something as simple as a lack of initiative (to ask each other out) and there you have it, 'friends' can sometimes be expendable too. It's sad, and regrettable but that's just the way things roll; like how lovers turn to strangers or how close friends can turn to mere acquaintances over extended periods of not keeping in touch.
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