Alive

Couple days ago a very best friend of mine told me a bad news. He said he was dumped by his boyfriend. It wasn't a long relationship, I didn't even know that he was in relationship, but it was heartbreaking. I hate break-ups.

I was surprised, not because of the break-up, but because he was in a relationship. This long friend of mine, just call him Andrew, he had this strong stance about gay relationship. Being raised in a traditionally Chinese culture and living in a town far from hustle and bustle like Jakarta for his whole life, he was indeed a family guy, and he would set aside his ego (and maybe love life) for the sake of his parents' happiness. He stated over and over that he would marry a girl, that he would try his best to do so. He had a girlfriend once but they didn't make it and became friends ever since. He had never been in any relationship with men whatsoever, because he didn't want it, until last October.


Long story short, he fell for this guy, a guy next door, who had his education abroad and just came home for couple months. He was resistant at the beginning for what he believed and he was trying hard not to fall. But this guy, Darren, was persistent. And finally, he fell in love. Hard. It was maybe the best two months he ever had until this young guy, decided to go to Jakarta for some business. This was when all the problems started to follow.

Darren was getting afar. "Miss" and "love" were never there like they used to. Until one day, Darren broke Andrew up. Andrew tried his best to respect Darren's decision. Broken-hearted, Andrew let Darren go.


In our midnight talk, I remember Andrew asking me this:
"Beb (he called me bebeb), what would you prefer for me, marrying a girl or having a relationship with man?"
After long pause I answered, "I would prefer you to be happy."
He said, "You didn't answer my question. Answer me, please."
Then I said, "With a man..."
"I knew it, I knew it." he said.
I laughed and continued, "In my eyes, you are happier that way. You can say that you haven't met the right girl yet. But from your stories about Darren, I can feel that you are alive. It's like Darren brought moments of happiness that you never felt before. These times you may find that it is devastating, being dumped and everything, but look at the bright side, you have found who you really are. You know what makes you happy. You know how vulnerable you are when you are in love. You can fool anyone, but you can't fool yourself (and me by all means, Lol)."

The conversation continued,

Me : "And yet you said you didn't regret any of them."
Andrew : "Ahh, you got me. I don't."


Note. I wrote this post with Andrew's approval.