The year I turned 23 I was lucky enough to find the two nicest guys on a dating app known for notorious fuckboys. Of course this came right after my being unlucky enough to be dumped by yet the same person for the ninth or tenth time. But well.
Among the many other matches, the first thing these two had in common was the pictures of cats on their profile instead of themselves. The second was the gut instinct I had that neither of them had an ounce of hidden intention. The third was their taking me seriously and choosing to start a friendship despite my dark humour and negativity.
If you don't know, I would come to marry one of these two. Here's the story of the other, one of the forms of friendship that I somehow managed to find in a place people usually only found rebounds.
When you've been shipwrecked you will do anything to survive. Some of us prioritise finding a water source, or building fire. Some of us forge weapons to fend off live danger. But we tend to forget also keeping our sanity intact, there being no sign of humanity anywhere.
When I was marooned, my sanity subconsciously became my priority. I talked to friends both old and new, I had one-sided conversations with my notebooks, my version of stray volleyballs. Somehow they all morphed into one person, a living, breathing human that restarted my life on a Wednesday night.
He was the very first from the app that I met in person. Late night conversations that made me feel like we'd known each other our whole lives. He became my best friend in that short timespan, somehow knowing me the way nobody else did. Somehow liking me, despite my negativity I thought would only repel.
I will always owe him for understanding me wholeheartedly, and I know he liked me for me, among all the girls in his life. I will always owe him for the dreamcatchers he twined together after I mentioned my constant nightmares. And I will always owe him for leaving him stranded, for being his hurricane after crying to him about mine.
I ended up choosing somebody else, but he will always be the first friend I had at the end of my years-long tunnel. A friend who wasn't an ex's first, a friend who simply accepted and understood.
The long walk beneath the train tracks, coping forks from a convenience store for the cheesecake he bought. Petting a stray cat in the middle of people's bungalows and unintentionally making him laugh. Driving home, him letting me choose the music and the flow of the conversations. These are the ways he will always be the sunshine I remember him for.
Saying out loud that I didn't see anything worthwhile in life despite his support. Slow replies suddenly one night, he was sick and I was with someone else. All the laughter we shared wiped out with a few swallows of his whiskey. There is no way to replace his last memory of me anymore; I will always be the midnight rain he remembers me for.
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