I just spent the past week of my life with a severe allergic reaction to my medication, and being heavily medicated in a an effort to subdue the painfully itchy hives and rash all the fuck over my body, and thinking what a terrible way this would be for me to die. And as I ate lunch in long sleeves and jeans in the sweltering heat of Central Park, I got melancholy and a little nostalgic about my childhood as I prepared for death which I was sure was coming for me, because even my scalp was itchy and after I ate my lips would get really red and it was NOT ATTRACTIVE.
But I also thought about my best friend from childhood, who is still one of the most important people in the world, not least because we both grew up without a whole lot of money around families that seemed to have too much money, and because when I needed an escape from my own morose self and the stress of my family, she was there to restore my sanity. Every time I talk to her, I feel warm and happy and I feel eight years old again, sitting at her dinner table, gleefully eating white people food (salad and grilled chicken and ice tea) by candlelight and then falling asleep on the couch to Ghostbusters. I treasure her because she traveled with me through time. We became, or are becoming, adults together, but more importantly she reminds me of how I grew into my own skin. She is one of the last people who knew my father, which feels weird to say and even weirder to think about. One time, my dad beat her in arm wrestling with one finger. When she ate dinner at my house, she didn't flinch at our weird soups, the fact that we had two forks in the entire house, or that everyone chewed with their mouths open. We were endlessly jealous of the way we were beloved by each others' parents and how they wished we would behave like the other. I took my shoes off by the door at her house and her mother swooned, she ate two bowls of rice in a sitting and my parents cried tears of joy. I like to think that when we're older and have kids of our own, we'll be able to casually drop by each others' homes for dinners, drink together and eat melty Reisen, and then cry together while we watch Mulan.