This means you just hold on to your anger in silence and the undercurrent of resentment towards me taints everything you say and do. This in itself hurts me more, adding another one to the list, if there is one. This means we hardly have civil conversations, let alone intimate ones. I miss having a best friend I can talk to; realising I lost my best friend only now, years after the fact. This in itself hurts me also. 

When I was in primary school, when I was aged seven to nine, I had a mean best friend, which sounds like an oxymoron. SJ was taller than me, didn't live too far away from where I did, and we often walked home from school together. I met her in my primary one class, which was a mix of kids from all kinds of family backgrounds and basic academic capabilities. Both of us came from English-speaking families and had other things in common such as books we like to read, if memory serves me right. It was pure happenstance that we became friends. SJ was my first real friend, first best friend too. We stayed in the same class for the following two years, which were formed based on academic grades; some schools kept the class together across standards but ours wasn't like that, so I think being able to promote into the same class twice cemented our odd friendship further. 

SJ was not always mean. There were times her meanness flared up, and then at homeostasis she would be good company to a large extent. Her main attack was accusation. She would accuse me of things I didn't do, and I would of course stand up for myself, and we would have big arguments. She would either accuse me verbally or write to me. There was one particular argument we had, the only one which I can still remember what the accusation was about. It happened in front of the entire primary three class, and all the boys and girls in the class witnessed it happen. I am pretty sure there was crying from both me and her. 

It happened the day after one lesson during which the teacher wanted us to use our coloured pencils. This was unexpected; if a lesson required us to bring something to school that day, the teachers would ask us the day before to bring the item from home, and usually that included getting us to write in our notebooks a written reminder to pack our schoolbags accordingly. Because we didn't all bring our box of coloured pencils, we had to borrow them from those who happened to bring them. SJ was one of the students who did, so a lot of us who sat near her in class went to her desk to ask her to loan out hers. There was a red one I borrowed, and when I was done using it, I went to return it to her, but she was surrounded by other kids, and when I told her I was returning her the red pencil, she didn't acknowledge it, maybe busy talking to the others. As it turned out, she didn't know I returned it, and it got lost later in the end. The next morning before lessons started, she came to class and started screaming at me in front of everyone and accused me of not returning her the pencil she lent me. 

That was what the big fight was about. And our entire class turned out to be our jury. This was at an age where boys usually teased and made fun of girls, not yet at an age where we would be having sensible friendships with the opposite sex. We would have to learn how to socialise with each other, and our teachers as educators thus paired us up in boy-girl seating arrangement and we even had to hold hands with our partners when we were lined up in a queue and walking. But that morning, the entire class including the boys all sided with me in that fight. Perhaps they didn't like SJ, perhaps it was based on the logic of both our arguments, perhaps they all saw that I didn't have the red pencil in my pencil case. 

My seating partner, after SJ and I had ended the fight to sit down and prepare for class, tried to cheer me up and comfort me. He had recently acquired a new toy, some magic trick kind of gadget, brought it to class to show it off, and had it in his hands or pockets all the time. But that day, he offered to give me his favourite new toy, because he thought it would make me feel better. I can't remember whether I accepted it; but I remember holding it in my hands - the toy was warm and clammy with sweat, and not very clean. But the gesture stayed with me throughout. Years later when we had our reunions, I reminded everyone, including him, what he did for me that day. 

When we first got to know each other, you became the boy who comforted me like my partner did when I was nine. This was why I loved you, and it assured me that you were the right person to have in my life. But over the years, you ended up being like my mean best friend. Only thing is, now I don't have a friend to comfort me with his magic trick toy anymore. There is nobody as our jury, and no one is on my side. 

worlds upon words