Tuesday, September 30, 2014

A letter to B

Soon it will be 10 years ago that our roads parted. We were at the university, and after the times when our group was partying all the time together you joined an other group of friends and were not in contact with us that much any more. We heard about you again when we got the news about your funeral right at the beginning of the exam period. You fell from the window after a party and died.

The funniest memory of our friendship is when I had a crush on one of our friends who appeared with his girlfriend that time at one of the freshers excursions and when you saw how upset I got you asked me "if you should beat down the bitch for me". I still have to laugh every time when I remember this, because you were such a kind person and would have never done anything like this. But exactly because of this this emphatic sentence sounded so kind from your mouth.

As life went on many things happened, and sometimes I remembered you, and I was thinking of it what would I tell you how I think life is if I could ever see you again.

I remembered you again some months ago when I read an interview where an actress who turned 30 said that she does not worry about age. She said she is happy that she had the chance to turn 30, because there are people who actually can not live that long at all.


Couple of things what I can tell you about the times since you left:

My so called adulthood started with a horrible morning when you were also there still with us. I just moved to Budapest and wanted to visit my grandparents during first week at the uni. I woke up because Dad was calling. I started to say that "Sorry Dad, we had a party the night before, but I will start to go soon." , when he told me that my grandma died suddenly "just so" the night before.

It took me weeks to be able to cry, because the pain went so deep that I was in a shock and I just dealt with it as a fact for a long time, as if it would be a news in the newspaper.

...

Then I moved to Finland and the Erasmus was amazing. I have never felt so free in my life before for such a long period of time. I was biking in the beautiful forests, swimming in the lake in October after sauna, made many friends from all over the world. We went for a walk at 2 am to the forest with a flash light in the middle of the winter and played poker with beans. I felt so that I can be whoever I want to be and that the rules of others do not apply to me. I can live as I want until I do not hurt others, and do not break promises and obligations I committed to keep. I looked at people from outside, while i still liked them a lot, and by doing so I also understood my own fears and wishes better.

...

The third story is more about a feeling in general. My grandfather used to tell repeatedly a story about how to escape from a whirl. He was caught by a whirl once in his childhood and he liked to explain that the trick was that when a whirl catches you, you should not move. Most of the people try to escape too fast which kills them in the end, because they get exhausted and drawn. But if you wait patiently a bit, the whirl will throw you out just as it was catching you.
He also told stories about one wild horse in the army what no one could ride, and he managed to break in. And also about the war when he was face to face with the enemy, and he saw only a boy just like himself when looking at him, and instead of killing him he let him go.

In the everyday I get up day after day, and I search for a life with a meaning. In this time since we parted I had many answers for the question. And always when I thought I found the answer something happened, and I had to search for an other answer again. Probably there might be people who take this game really seriously with all the fame and success and the shine. But I think so that most of us aim for two things. The one is inner stability which governs our life to the tasks we have to do. And the other is that when we look to the mirror in the morning we wish to see see in our eyes that everything is all right, and we are happy.

You would not think how easy it is to get lost in this so called adult life from time to time. And our life is full of trade off-s. We always look to the next week, the next month, the next year, but yet inner peace is so hard to achieve. And if we finally find it, it is so easy to loose.

But I tell you also one nice story at the end. Two years ago when I took the language exam in Hanko, I got lost and hence I took the wrong road by the sea. It was snowing the night before which was very atypical for that time of the year. There was also a lighthouse opposite the shore, and as the sun was rising the red lighthouse was shining almost orange in between the houses. There was no one else besides me and that moment when I was standing there on the shore watching the sunrise over the sea was one of the most magical moments of my life.

Sometimes when I think of you and I have a bad day, I feel guilty. But mostly I remember you looking at me cheering me up with that one stupid sentence, and I start to laugh. I think you just knew  it so well what to say in that moment when I needed it the most, and that was so great :)!

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