Myla Katzav

Today, I got a beautiful email from a dear friend in London.  Apparently, she read my blog.  It made me reflect about friendship…and I had to write about it, breaking my rule of not posting any article on a weekend.

 

She called herself an absentee friend..well, I am guilty of that too and I apologize for it as well. 

 

We knew each other from college.  We did not hang out immediately but somehow, our similar schedules and easy-going attitudes pushed us to form our own group.  A group composed of two probinsiyanas (Tacloban and Zamboanga), one semi-probinsiyana (Pampanga) and the city girl. We had it easy in college..our course was the easiest after all.  They had boyfriends and I felt I had one too…just watching and listening to them blabber about it non-stop specially when they got into fights or when we went on stake-outs until 3 am .  They introduced me to a guy from another university who became my “first” boyfriend but who went missing after a month when my brother, cousins and some neighbors threatened him with an idea of a gun.  We continued being friends after college and even got closer as we started to carve our prints in the corporate world.  We shared thousands of dinners after work, slept over in one’s apartment for weeks, experienced a horrible earthquake and cried buckets of tears together.

 

And since we parted ways physically..somehow, our friendship took the same fate.  But today…is different because her mail redefined our bond.  And I quote her: 

 

I try hard to make friends here in London and up to now I have never really found the kind of friendship I've shared with you and the 2 other girls....and I've missed you so much guys...I for one can relate to your feelings on how it's like to be homesick and there's that rebelling attitude of consciously or unconsciously refusing to embrace change....I look for you guys in any potential friend I meet here but never measure up...but after reading your blog...guess what?! I've realized I don't need new friends, I don't need to find new ones that I could genuinely trust and completely be myself...I always have you guys  and I should not allow whatever distance we have now to get in the way....we can still be close and be there for each other in spite the miles apart..

 

I used to explain to my husband everytime he asked me why I don’t make any effort to make friends here in Israel: That we (my friends and I back home) are like old trees..you cannot change the way our branches and leaves and trunks are formed unless you cut it and it dies.  

 

And Sally, just like you, I haven’t made new good friends here because what I have back home and scattered all over the world, are enough best friends who are capable of changing a regular day into something as beautiful as today.

Tags: friend, friends, friendship, old friends
Categories: My own "Exodus"