I received an email from a childhood girlfriend telling me that she’s engaged. Wow, finally I guess after so many years’ looking, she must have found someone she really wants to make a lifetime commitment.

She also sent me a photo of this happy couple holding Champagne glasses to celebrate this special moment. I found myself actually have no clues about the man on the photo. I guess, in the past a couple years, we had drifted apart with the separate lives going on in different countries. I never had ringed up to ask how she’s doing with her personal life in US and I, pretty much had settled in AU, down under this hemisphere, and had been very lazy to care for other people’s life.

Time flies by…. It’s been a while since the last conversation on the phone. She is at the same age of mine. We met in school when I was in Year 4, let’s say, about 10 years old. We’d been together for two years or so, and then she went to Shenzhen with her parents.

During those two years, we shared a lot of girl things which are supposed to be done at that age. We did as Japanese TV series “Volleyball Girls” to play a handmade cotton volleyballs; we played the violin after school and shared our little Chinese writings; we walked 40 minutes to go to a special place where we can buy shredded ice cream and then did our showers in a public bathroom, …Lots of memories! After she’s gone, we had been keeping in touch by letters since then until I graduated from the Uni and she went to America for the bigger dream.

Theoretically speaking, we are 24 years friends and should connect each other in some ways, but I don’t know why our boats of life had floated apart so far from each other, even to a distance that I feel difficult to pick up again I guess it’s the nature of a human being to complete the whole circle of one’s life. We were born, and grow up, go to work, find the other half in crowd, get married, have kids and family, then get old. You make a move, people make moves as well. After having experienced all the changes in our life, I wonder how many friends would end up being with you the whole lifetime. Sadly, at the end of the day, it’s quite often that the only thing that you can keep for a life time is yourself. A lonely soul!