It is never easy for me to say goodbye especially when it is between me and my best friend.
The day when she told me that she was going to move away to Canada with her family was
one of the toughest moment I had to go through as a kid.
Her name was Cynthia and we knew each other since we were 7. And we went to the same school which is in Shanghai, China until she moved away to Canada. Whenever I needed her she had always been there for me. She had big round eyes and long wavy hair which she tied into a pony tail the day we first met at the admission meeting for school. She wore a pink sun dress with several flowers on it, and I remember her laugher when she giggled. I would never have knew that that day is the day I get to meet my best friend for the rest of my life.
I was shy at first and did not have the nerve to talk to anyone at the meeting, so I hid behind my mom while Cynthia walked towards me and asked me if I wanted to join her for a game. I did not know what to say I was so terrified at the moment; however, Cynthia held my hand and led me to the playground. I don’t remember what happened exactly but she invited me for ice-cream after that. Because she was very bubbly and joyful, I enjoyed her company very much, and it turned out that we lived in the same neighborhood. And gradually we went to school together everyday and all the cheerful memories and lunch break giggles made our friendship closer and closer. Cynthia was also a only child just like me ;however; what I envied the most about her was that she had a golden retriever named Jack; we spent endless afternoons walking Jack and taking pictures of him and us. Cynthia’s parents always invite me to stay for dinner after our playdates or study dates, her dad was a chemistry professor and her mom was his student, her dad always bragged about how her mom fell in love with him during dinner. I genuinely felt like I was one of their family members.
Our middle school wasn’t a private middle school; it was just a normal public middle school in the neighborhood. However, we do have an awesome playground and it had great scenery, especially during autumn. The Buttonwood tree would have yellow leaves and when wind blew them down on the ground it was almost like a giant rug covered the whole playground. The joy from stepping on the fallen leaves and the noise that occurred from it were some of the best memories I had from middle school. However not everything was as smooth as a autumn wind. There was a bully in our middle school and everyone was afraid of him. He was the strongest and loudest kid in the whole school and just because I stepped on his shoes accidentally, he did not stop messing with me. Once he almost burnt my hair during science class and he said if I ever told anyone he would do whatever he could to make me suffer. I was so scared I did not know what to do. I did not go to the teacher or tell my mom but I told Cynthia for some reason, and she was so angry that I did not tell her sooner. She said that she was going to handle this by herself. I argued with her and told her I didn’t want her to get involved because of me and she said that was what best friends were for.
She tried to face the bully by herself and tired to talk some sense into him, however, he pushed her in the hall way and told her to mind her own business or else she was going to be his next target. I thought she was going to stop trying, but she tried to provoke him during class just to let the teacher notice his behavior, it didn’t work the first time, so she tried again and again. The second time our teacher thought Cynthia was the one who was disturbing the class and warned her not to do that again and she told our teacher that he had been bullying her just because she had stepped on his shoes by accident and she did not believe that because the bully always behaved himself in class and he didn’t want to get caught either. Cynthia dragged me to our teacher’s office after class tried to convince her. I explained what he’s done to me in that science class and that he threatened me not to tell anyone or else he was going to get even worse. He kept denying when the teacher confronted him and acted like I was the one had been lying the whole time. Cynthia knew that he had been bullying other kids from our class too, but they are also too afraid to tell the truth to our teacher because he must have told other kids the same thing which was not to tell anyone or else things were going to get worse.
What she did next for me is way too complicated. I guess she was trying to defend other victims too because the sense of justice inside her would not let her take no for an answer. She asked everyone in my class if they were getting bullied by him and none of them said yes because clearly they were all afraid of him. But she did not give up. She kept asking around and finally there were three more people who were also getting bullied by him and she convinced them to talk to the teacher with me and prove that we are getting bullied. I don’t know how Cynthia did all that. I was really impressed by her and how she managed to do all that by herself. After hearing what the bully had done to the students, our teacher was furious at him and called his parents to school and of course forced him to apologize to all of us. None of us would have know what to do without Cynthia. She really taught me not to be afraid of bullies and stand up to them and face all the difficulties instead of running from them.
We were always each other’s rock when it came to difficulties in our life. She would listen to all my troubles without interrupting and would give me advice and lead me to a better life choice. Whenever we argued she would always take the high road and apologize first because she knew our friendship was way too precious to be ruined by some meaningless argument. I learned a lot from her. I am constantly amazed by how mature she were even though we are clearly the same age yet she knew so much more than me.
Her family moved to Canada because of her mother’s work since there was a better opportunity for her further to her career. And her dad followed and of course Cynthia did too. She moved away at the end of the last year of middle school, I had never felt so devastated. The fact that I was not going to see her everyday and share every details in my life just made me realized how much she meant for me, how much our friendship had changed me. My family moved to California after a few months she moved away and I remember we would FaceTime each other to share how we were dealing with the new exciting environment, since we basically we went through the same process of moving from our old neighborhood to a new country. At first, we would complain about how much we miss home and look back of all the good memories we had together, while gradually I guess we both adjusted well and made new friends, we stopped calling each other as frequent as we used to do and to be honest, either Cynthia or me felt we were trying to distant each other, there was just a lot going on with high school and like I said we adjusted well and made new friends. And I got used to not having my best friend around me everyday even though it is tough whenever I wanted to tell a joke that only she would understand because we are both quirky and have the same sense of humor. I miss her very much but between school and homework, there was barley anytime and I had a cool group of friends in high school too which made it less difficult for me.
Cynthia visited me in LA during last summer, it was only one week but we went on a little field trip by ourselves. I showed her my favorite spot for city view on the mountain and we walked on the beach, we even went to Disneyland together. We talked so much on the first day that our lips were dry and we couldn’t stop talking till midnight. She is currently majoring in business and management in college and she told me that business school wasn’t as easy as she thought, there were so many late night studying that she was so overwhelmed by school work; because of that we didn’t really have time to talk to each other these days, but whenever we FaceTimed each other, it took hours and hours.
She was that special someone to me, my day one, no one will ever replace how I felt about her, our friendship was based on rock solid, it doesn’t matter how far we are from each other, we both know that we care for each other and support each other unconditionally.