The Ex-Best Friend

Cleopatra turns 26 today. It felt like yesterday when we celebrated her 18th birthday. It was the year we met, when we were in college. We met through Wan Nei on the first day of college. They were schoolmates, whereas Wan Nei and I were classmates then.

Wan Nei and I had similar personalities, while Cleopatra was totally, totally opposite from us. Despite that, we became very fast best friends, we balanced each other out. I still remember 8 years ago today, we celebrated Cleopatra's birthday at American Chilli's, BSC. We called a couple of friends along, one of them were Shaggy, whom eventually got steady with Wan Nei until this very day. We had a blast. It was indeed a memorable occasion. Little did we know it was the first and final birthday celebration we had for Cleopatra.

The next year, Cleopatra left for Melbourne. I stayed back for a couple of months before I left for Sheffield. For the next 2 years or so, we only met each other when we came back to Malaysia for our study breaks. We never got to celebrate her birthdays. Despite being continents away from each other, we were still very close. We wrote e-mails and snail mails furiously, we chatted online almost everyday. We stood by each other at all times. I guess you can say that distance made the friendship stronger.

Somehow our 3+ years of friendship eventually ended. A test was thrown and we failed. We were no longer best friends. The reason? I'll write about it on my next post. Since then, we barely kept in contact with each other. I'd still try to call or email her on her birthday each year. I'd call her to meet up with Wan Nei and a few other friends, she never turned up.

Today's her birthday. I called her in the afternoon, we talked for a while. "Call me whenever for yum char or something yeah." "Yup, will do. Happy Birthday". We hung up. That was it.

While I am flipping through the photo album taken on Cleopatra's birthday 8 years ago, Wan Nei and Shaggy are at the very same Chilli's celebrating their 8th year anniversary of meeting each other the first time on that fateful night. They even planned to wear exactly the same attire they wore that night. Cleopatra? I guess she's probably having a blast with her friends.

Funny how things turned out to be..