On my first day at the university, I made a friend who greatly impacted my life. Sadly, not long after our youth service, she died in a fire accident. I remember her often. So, when I did a free-writing exercise and was asked to write to a friend. I wrote to one person I wanted to talk to the most, Gwen. Here we go.<\/p>\n
Dear Gwen,<\/p>\n
No pun intended but I have been dying to tell you how we have all changed, have marriages, have kids, have lives that no longer intersect at \u2018Tantalisers for meals\u2019 or \u2018Chapel for everything else\u2019 We do bridal showers now, baby showers and weddings. It takes a long time but when we meet, the time hasn\u2019t passed at all. We talk like we just walked out of Alao or Enwefah\u2019s class, remembering the jokes that made it worthwhile. We\u2019re all boxed into this new reality that is adulthood, and we swear came unprepared- all of us. No one made it clear that it could be this trying, this challenging, this grown- You\u2019d be loving it though, and if you were here, I could never make you an adult if I tried.\u00a0 You were always your own person, never really let down by anything. I remember how you loved chocolates, how they made you a little hyper.\u00a0 You once challenged me to name a bar of chocolate you had not tried, I had to google to keep up. The first time I walked into your room, <\/em>looking to borrow notes from the 100-level mass comm student that stays in 2D, you gave me your 5-in-1 notes. <\/em>In our 3rd<\/sup> year, you would tell me it\u2019s because I had an unforgettable face.<\/p>\n It\u2019s funny how time keeps moving. You have the unforgettable face now, but there is no tick for you though, no second-hand shifting us to the future, no clock. Just memories. These days I cut my fingernails, there\u2019s no use for keeping something that causes too much pain, like the memory of your birthdays, I try to forget. Today I\u2019m listening to a person I find suspect, teach me about reconnecting through poetry\u2014the best part of me. As I said, we have well changed, but I remember everything. My mind still weeps for the days you needed more, and I was on a stage somewhere performing while your heart was gently slowing.<\/p>\n I\u2019m doing my best not to carry this guilt any longer, so I\u2019ve written you this letter to post later online somewhere, to remind myself you\u2019re missed, but I won\u2019t be mailing it, there\u2019s no envelope for grief like this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On my first day at the university, I made a friend who greatly impacted my life. Sadly, not long after our youth service, she died in a fire accident. I remember her often. So, when I did a free-writing exercise and was asked to write to a friend. I wrote to one person I wanted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4957,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4932"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4932\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4972,"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4932\/revisions\/4972"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}