Friendship Currency

I had the most wonderful visit last Friday from a good old friend. Fische and I have known each other for 8 years now, and despite the distance, as with good old friends, it seems like we've never left each other. While having chocolate tarts and lattes at Jerome's, I was giving him the usual verbal bash of how he's been too busy to drop by KL on his way to Subang from Singapore.

We've mastered this routine for the last 4 years, since his career skyrocketed despite the Bubble's burst. Then he made the statement: "You know that if you ever needed me, I'm always there." No, this was no suave statement to dig someone out of trouble - this was the honest truth. The furthest I have been out of touch with him, I have always had his mother's number. Which was how I found him to tell him that I had met the love of my life. The visit was long, for his standards. We extended coffee to dinner, he met Sharizal, we said goodbye. What I couldn't shake off the whole weekend was a feeling of guilt - that I could always reach him, but I didn't.

Friendship is a two-way street. And yes, I do the things modern friends do - send stupid jokes over email, sms on special occassions. The odd thing was that I felt that I was in an inequitable arrangement, where I came up short. The truth is, he was always there - at the oddest moments. Two major (and many many minor) events over the last 8 years, he was there and he made sense, despite his own personal struggle to prove something to the love of his life. I guess after that coffee, I realised that I never had the opportunity to reciprocate. And in friendship currency, I still owe him two - at least.