I am too reserved to make easy friendships. Someone once said that I always seemed to have a way of holding myself apart from the world, an observer rather than an active participant. Really? I don’t know, perhaps. People come and go, and sometimes they simply disappear forever into lost time. I am not very good at this out-of-sight-out-of-mind thing, so I guess subconsciously I keep the others at safe distance, trying not to get too attached. Or perhaps my self-protection is just too strong for me to let down the guard easily.

         Last month I ran into one of my college classmates at a park. I haven’t seen him since graduation and this encounter told me once again how stunning effect the time could have played on a human being. I saw the same conclusion in his eyes too: First confusion, later recognition and then surprise. An idea suddenly struck me: I had lost contacts with almost all my classmates and L was the only exception. L and I are still very close, but fairly speaking, that has nothing to do with me. She married to my husband’s best friend, that’s probably the major reason why after so many years, she has still stayed in my close circle. In college, we were barely friends.

         Honestly, I didn’t have many friends in college. I was sort of loner, shy and terribly insecure. There was something made my relationship with the others even worse. I didn’t know how it happened, like many other things, it just happened. A boy in the class fell in love with me. He made bold moves and soon it had become a well-known fact among my classmates. I didn’t get use to such blatant attention, let along know how to deal with it properly. I retreated every time he advanced, and finally I took the easy way out. I ignored him and as well as all his friends---that’s pretty much the whole class since he was sort of popular type. Unfortunately he was not the one who would give up easily, so this tension had almost last for my whole awkward college time. Now I realized that if I could handle it in another way, the hurt might not go so deeply. I haven’t seen him after graduate, perhaps never will. I owe him an apology that could never been sent out.  

         Even a real loner needs companionship. LSY was my best and perhaps only friend in my class. She must have a gypsy girl living inside her Chinese body. I’ve never seen anyone so loves freedom and hates to be labeled like her. In fresh year, she spent a whole month travelling along, went to Xinjiang, Tibet and other places I never even heard of. Remember, that happened in the early 90’s, when knapsacking and road trip was seldom heard in China. I admired her courage and unbending spirit. She was the one who had accompanied me through those lonely moments. Together we shared youthful dreams, worries and uncertainties. After graduate, she went to American. We exchanged some letters afterwards, and then gradually drifted apart.

       People come and go, but always there are someone would leave something more than linger memories behind, something permanent and more solid, and something can’t be explained in words.