Have You Met, Decades Later, The Kid Whom You Thought Gave You A Hard Time – And Discovered You Now Get On Like A House On Fire?

Been there, done that. (And that could be for either of us)

People who have some recollection of me and YJ in primary school, do your double take right. Now. Both of you. On annual yoga conference here from Labuan, YJ came looking for me.

For the other person reading my blog who didn’t know me in primary school, YJ has featured in my early memory for some time as………… I don’t know. Not the only one nor the only time I had that sort of…. growing pains relationship (I maintain that I had Come Hate Me Face growing up), but back then hers had been a name that stuck.

When our family left Sandakan for Penang, I was 12. Out of the blue, I received a letter from YJ 2 years later. She’d somehow found my mailing address when we were both in Form 2. The one thing I remember from the long letter 14 year old me barely reacted to was something like, “I’ve always felt bad about how I treated you, and I’ve always wanted to say I was sorry.” 

We had been just 11 when YJ, initially one of my closest friends, and I fell out. I remember myself as the weaker girl of the two of us, the one on the ropes. I remember her as the one with girl friends. Therefore, my Alpha Girl – her, and another classmate who’d been my earlier Alpha Girl (and whom I’m also back in touch with, but that happened before the blog :D).

Me, I hadn’t fit in with a whole bunch of girl friends, I always just had a good friend here, a good friend there, and so of course Whole Bunch of Girlfriends was almost the only thing tween me ever wanted, socially. I longed for pajama parties (DON’T LAUGH) where we painted each other’s nails and braided our hair. (Oh, shut up. I thought that was what a cool tween girl should like. How come I didn’t really? Something must’ve been wrong with meeeeee!)

Instead, I played with – ugh – boys. Yet YJ tells me I was the one she had wanted to be like and that she wasn’t the only one. Watch my eyebrows reach my hairline. So basically our meeting was a lotta Really Meh Really Meh Really Meh Really Meh? 😀

But here’s the thing – 2 years later, in her writing me that letter out of the blue, when we would probably never see each other again, YJ demonstrated how she had grown far more than I had. What really impressed me today was 14 year old her.

14 year old me had been rather surprised. I wasn’t still mad at her, but I was pretty indifferent. I don’t remember in her letter any return address or invitation to respond, but certainly I could have hunted her down and it would’ve been much easier for me to do than it had been for her. My family had left town, hers hadn’t. After our class, her dad probably still taught in that school for a good few more years.

But I was “busy”. Around a big move were taekwondo gradings, music exams, lotsa hours in tuition classes, my first counterproductive crush on a boy… I just had so much stuff going on, I knew neither to bear a grudge nor to respond to her. Now I look back and remember a few more worse periods of erm, social stress and think – during the usual growing teenaged-girl angst, had I known to rebuild my friendship with her – a real friendship – it would have provided some insulation against further problems making friends/ fitting in in my new environment. 

So yeah, mental note to myself re Rockstars. (Though of course one has also to make sure that letter from 14 year old isn’t written by a fruitcake :P).

Anyway, it was a very long time before I looked back and respected her gesture, though I never forgot it. And so now, almost 30 years later, here we are.

Clarification: Not my FIRST crush on a boy, I said my first COUNTERPRODUCTIVE crush on a boy.