My Island in The Ocean of Uncertainty
A love letter to my friends.
I have loved many people in my life, but there are not many that I love the way I love my friends.
There was a point in my life where I grew really close with some coworkers from a previous job. A work event brought us together, and we have been inseparable ever since.
The nature of our jobs made us spend long hours at the office every day, and Friday nights had become the official ‘our night’, where we would go out until the early morning hours together.
I owed that period of my life to each and every one of them.
Back then, I didn’t know where I was going. I had just broken up with a long-term boyfriend, and things at work were not as pleasant as they had been before. But my friends provided some sort of solace — an island in the ocean of uncertainty.
One of them took me home when I couldn’t drive at 3:30 in the morning. One of them held my head when I was throwing up in the toilet. One of them always remembered my coffee order. One of them always texted me to make sure I got home safely.
All of them were a lighthouse on which I relied to know where I was going and how to get back home — figuratively and quite literally.
It has been well over a year since the last time we had that kind of night — the kind of night we would spend going down familiar roads, windows rolled all the way down, singing along to the songs in our playlist.
The nights were young — and so were we. We were in love, and the things we loved, loved us back.
We no longer work at the same place anymore, and we don’t see each other every single day like we used to. But there are parts of them that I will stay with me forever: their musical tastes, their laughs, their jokes, their hugs, their “we’ll wait downstairs; just let us know when you’re finished and then we can go out” texts.
We might never return to those nights again. The pandemic and life circumstances would get in our way now. But I will never forget how lucky I was to experience them.
And if I could be fortunate enough to live it all over again, then I’d take out my phone and text them: “I’ll wait downstairs, just let me know when you’re finished, and then we can go out.”
