Mood Swings Timelessness By Yasmine El-Rashidi Friendship can be a very frustrating thing. I would know. My closest friend and I argue constantly. We scream and shout and vow never to talk to one another again -- on any level. And then we do. Life is much the same in the way that it works. It twists and turns and changes path, and at times throws us completely off guard. We are convinced we are treading on stable ground; sure of the footholes before us and where they ultimately lead. But then we slip, stumble, and sometimes fall. We get up, and sometimes, something, somewhere, somehow, clicks. I call them "aha" moments. Aha moments are literally that: Times when a seeming light switch goes on, and clarity, if only momentary, is reached. In friendship these flashes of eureka are harder to hit. Not because in that realm clarity is not often reached, but because it is too hard, and hurtful, at times, to see. We never expect a friendship to change, evolve, and slowly fizzle and fade; never imagine that our best friends will not be with us forever, exiting the physical realms of our lives, never to enter again. I received an e-mail a few days ago. "Just dance", it said in the subject heading. "They say it takes a minute to find a special person, an hour to appreciate them, a day to love them, but then an entire life to forget them. Send this phrase to the people you'll never forget... If you don't send it to anyone, it means you're in a hurry and that you've forgotten your friends." I smiled when I read it, and unlike my usual habit of hitting the delete button instantaneously, I promptly forwarded it to a bunch of people I know. For once the cliché-ness of the e-mail was very touching. I often reminisce about my childhood days. My father often made fun of me, saying I sounded like I was an aging person. "But I am," I used to tell him. "I feel old." Saying this at 20, 21, or 22 comes across as something of a joke. But I meant it. I meant it because I felt that a lifetime of people were stored in my head; that millions of minutes of fun and laughter and experience lingered in the closed-off hallways of my mind that make up my past. And I meant it because I felt like a lifetime of memories were a lifetime away. And they are, in a sense. Like most young girls, I had many best-friends over the years. My brother scoffed that I had a new best-friend every week. I didn't quite see it that way, but turnover, I must admit, was certainly high. Today I can look back at those days and moments with much warmth and love. I still think of the girls I used to share my secrets with, and consult with about hair, clothes and boys. We used to wear odd socks -- one pink and one blue; stock up on smarties and candy, put sheets in tent-form over our beds, and stay up till midnight for our "midnight feasts". And I think often of our school trips, pantomimes, bazaars and seasonal events. And of course, I remember the giggles. Some of the girls I still hear about, others I wonder about, and a few I am still in touch with. We have fought, and screamed and cried to our mothers "so-and-so dumped me", but at the end of the day, their presence in my mind is strong and stirring. When I was seven, eight, 11, even 15 and 16, I could not quite grasp why friends had to come and go. "It's not fair," I would sob to my mother at the end of every school year. "Everyone always leaves and I'm left alone," I would utter through gasps of breath for air. "Why can't we leave too. Why does God hate me so much." I was referring to the foreign friends that would come in and out of my life on a steady, stream- like basis. It was something I never quite came to terms with. I still have a hard time understanding why certain things happen the way they do. Friendship especially; I find it the strangest of life's oddities. One day things are fine, and the next, for some reason, they are not. We struggle to find reason and rationale, and struggle simultaneously, to stay afloat. In recent years, as I have fought to find the pieces that would make my mosaic of inner peace, I have developed a belief in the notion of reason. Sometimes it takes a week, or month, or even years, but eventually, the reason for something happening becomes clear. I had an "aha" moment recently. It came after an argument with a close friend. We had our usual round of hysterical finger pointing, and each stormed off to face the weekend alone. I was devastated. "What am I going to do?" I sobbed to a spiritual and grounded friend. "I feel lost." She sat me down, looked me straight in the eye, and with a very tender but no-nonsense voice told me that I would reach out for love, support, and in the process of doing so, would learn to nurture myself from within. In the years when I had a million best friends, I did a decent job at that, but somewhere over time it was suppressed. In recent weeks, I seem to have found it again. I have let go of the anger and resentment, the hurt and bitterness, and I am feeling, instead, the urge to extend love and support. Not just to friends, but also to the man on the street. It is astonishing how far-reaching that kind of energy is. When I logged onto my e-mail the other day, and found the "just dance" message, I felt my soul sparkle with passion. The e-mail was from one of those girls I spent hours giggling with -- and searching for lost pairs of socks. We had not been in touch for over 10 years. She never left my thoughts, but she had been just that: a thought. As had been I. As I face the changed façade of my dynamic with a close friend, and I also say goodbye to one of the most inspiring people I know, a part of me aches from the discomfort of the unknown next step I take. But I think of time, and coincidence, and pathways, and I know that just as our paths crossed for a reason, so too do they veer apart. I find peace in the fact that memories, and time, and moments, are timeless, and the moments I choose to hold on to will serve as sources of equally endearing energy for those I meet along the next part of my life's path.
