College (Part II-A First & Singular Friendship)

College: that mythical place and time in which one graduates from adolescence to well-deserved recognition into adulthood is an illuminating, sobering, empowering, and deeply transformative period. The grounds in which one gets broken in with impassioned idealism or irremediable cynicism, college opens up a world of virgin territories that demands a close-up examination of the world that surrounds us and the often elusive world inside us. More than just the intellectual gain that one is certain to undergo, there is inevitably profound personal realization and growth that takes place. Sitting in philosophy class entranced by the professor’s erudite discourse incites enlightening intellectualizing while sitting next to your college soul-mate conversing and sharing the entirety of such experiences ignites an emotional wildfire that is unlikely to burn out. Finding and discovering in college someone that shares our most deeply-held ideals and sentiments, someone that dispels the illusion of eternal solitude, someone that challenges the mind and nurtures the heart is a rare and fortunate event, a sort of epiphany that I confess to have experienced.

It took us both by surprise. In the mist of forging that solitary and aloof attitude, I found your easy laugh and candid camaraderie disarming. Exploring the freshness and novelty of college that first year and searching for my place in it, I found you; we lived and shared nearly every moment of that first year. Whether they were euphoric, devastating, hilarious, or tear-jerking, those intimate and sometimes very public moments infused those months of late-night studying and burgeoning adulthood with laughter that never ceased, support that never wavered and intuitive understanding that is more than rare; although raised states away, we were what you would call, fruits from the same tree.

In that first chance encounter in the car, it was already evident the natural affinity between you and me. Friendship comes in many forms but I have noticed a tendency for immediate bonds to grow organically, becoming firm and deep bonds. How quickly we discovered an unusually fluid rapport. Your company from that first day became addictive, not in a harmful sense; more like the way a plant moves towards sunlight whenever it’s within reach, and when there’s no sunlight, the plant yearns for its return and once the sun reveals itself again, the plant eagerly and enthusiastically bathes in the sun’s rays. Your friendship was sunlight for me: it nurtured and fortified me; it helped me to grow. Occasionally, our friendship took the backseat while the excitement of another kind of love, romantic love, took the front seat, but with time it irrefutably became obvious that our friendship was irrevocably irreplaceable.

Adventures and misadventures: we experienced them all and often times, together. There were times when we stayed up all night, working, conversing, laughing or crying, like that night when I found you sitting in the lonely dorm corridor, teary-eyed and broken-winged; that was a misadventure but not entirely so. Not sure what it is that I do, or maybe it’s what you do, but I’m funnier around you and cheering you up, cheers me up. So that night, a casualty of romance turned into a bittersweet farewell to memories that concluded with the both of us sound asleep in your dorm room (which inexplicably I always preferred to mine) as dawn began to break. Our friendship helped us ease through just about any unwelcomed changes and withstand unforeseen storms; it has left an ineluctable imprint upon me that resists time, rather it grows longer roots and buries itself deeper in me with time.

We often wondered at the myriad of surprises in life, some delightful, and others less so. It’s like star-gazing and connecting the twinkling points in any random formation with some stars emitting dazzling illumination, others only dim hope and others still, just a momentary shimmer destined to vanish for eternity. Our friendship shined an immeasurably brilliant light into my heart and into my life; its birth had the intensity of a shooting star but its constancy and interminability has the transcendence of an ever-shining sun, and it will stay with me for always.