Safety Pin

Jakarta, 11 July 2021

Pyschologist said that if a friendship lasts longer than 7 years, it will last a lifetime.

I was reading this quote maybe around 10-15 years ago, when I’m really into quotes in twitter era. Well, on my opinion, twitter is  the best social media so far.

Sometimes, when we read something, our brain is automatically sync with certain memories, a person, an event, a song.
When I was read this quote, my though goes directly to these person, my junior high school friends.

This year, we celebrate our 23 years of friendship.
The amount of the year itself can legally took alcoholic drinks with all of us.

Let me tell you story about us.

Three of us are met in  junior high school, we’re in the same class together.
And we’re found out that we’re having the same star sign : Pisces, which make it easy if we want to check out our zodiac in the magazine.

When we first met, I remember looking at Linda’s foot who got bad bruises due to her lesson to ride a motorcycle (yeap at first grade of junior high), but her smile was so bright and she is – up until now – still one of the friendliest person I’ve known.
I don’t remember how I met Sari for the first time because she is one of social butterfly – she knows everyone. We have 5 first grade class at that time and she can goes directly from my class to the end of the row class during recess time.

We form this friendship when we join altar girls and boys community in the cathedral.
During all of the schedule and sleepover when we celebrate Easter and Christmas, we’ve bond together. We met Egie also. Well, not literally met, because they are coming from the same elementary school while I was came from different school.
We’re met Donnie because he was Sari’s bestfriends during her high school but we’re getting along well.

Little do we know, that this kind of friendship is indeed have special bonds.
We’re going to different high school, all of us.
Then, Sari and I met by accident when we registered in the university – it turns out we took the same major. Without have any conversation about it.

One thing that reminds the same for all of this years is : we’re actually not communicate very often.
Of course, the communication style is quite different back then. And yes, we just have whatsapp group recently. But, we’re not the kind of people who really communicate every single day.
Sometimes, we have serious conversation that lead to long conversation when it’s needed.
Or sharing video/picture that we discuss – mostly silly video/picture. We definitely won’t burden our stressful life with another stressful conversation.

We try to meet others when we’re back in the hometown and have some good laughter.

But, I realized now, that it wasn’t the things that makes us have strong bond with each other.
We do have good memories with each other, a good laughter during the conversation or simply because one of us doing something silly.

No, the things that makes our strong bond  is our life struggle.

We’re so far already deals with thesis, heart break, losing a job, losing important people in our lives, got worried because we have family matters and so on.
At the darkest and difficult times, no matter where we are, we always find a time to took a phone calls and listen to our friends. Either it’s an ear to lend, words of encouragement or just a virtual hug.
At the darkest and difficult times, we know that we have each other.

And I think, that’s the important things about friendship, isn’t it?
When we know that we always have someone that we depends on outside our family.
Four of us are first born, we’re having an unspeakable bonds with our family – you, the first borner must know about this matters.
But, with them, I know that we have quite different relationship but as strong as family.
My second family. My safety pin.
A place where I can tell them almost everything that might not be able to share with my own family

Five of us rarely living in the same city at the same time.
We’re surviving Bali – Surabaya – Jakarta – Dubai – Maldives – Lombok era, up until now.

We didn’t know where the future will take us.
But, one thing for sure, no matter where we are, we have each other.

Cheers,
Amel