바닐라 어쿠스틱 (Vanilla Acoustic) – Dear

Fine, I’ll translate this song! You know this was actually one of the songs I didn’t like, but in an interview, both Vanilla Man and Sung Ah (the members of Vanilla Acoustic) chose Dear as their favorite song in the album… so you win. And as I mentioned earlier, here’s part two to my People series: friends. Again, I’ll try my best to keep it short.
I once told a friend, “You know… you may not always be the first person I think of, but you certainly will be the last.” In my head, that was a compliment. Our immediate group of friends naturally change over time as it is heavily dependent on our physical location, and what I wanted to tell him was that no matter who I may be the closest to at any given time, he’ll always have a place in my mind. To my surprise, he was seriously offended, and it’s been more than two years since I talked to him. He no longer has a place in my mind.

There’s too much vagueness for my liking to friendship even from the get-go. We’re not born into it (family), nor do we agree on it (significant other), and it’s exactly this lack of assumed responsibility that makes friendship so comfortable, yet fleeting at the same time. When can we start calling someone a friend, and more importantly, when do we stop?

I spent most of my childhood hopping around different countries: birth in Korea (lol, parallelism makes me write it this way), infancy in Philadelphia, preschool in Hong Kong, elementary school in Korea, middle and high school in New Jersey, and college in Boston. With every move, I was left in an environment where I had to start over, start meeting new people, having to explain why I moved, where I’m from, and by the time I moved to New Jersey in middle school, I was sick of it. I barely talked to anyone, let alone speak, besides the occasional “here” to be marked present. Days passed without me saying more than five words, and the world was OK with that, and I had to be OK with that. And yes, it was about race, it was about the cultural barrier, the language barrier, and the immaturity and ignorance of the middle school kids, and that made me put up my own barrier against people, against friends. Looking back, I can think of two people from high school who truly tried to be my friend, who understood that we didn’t need to have watched the same shows as a child or spoken the same language at our homes in order to become friends, but I didn’t believe in friendship anymore at that point. To me, friendship was not only fleeting, but also extremely uncomfortable.

That view was challenged as I entered college. Simply based on race, I could relate with others for the first time, and I could say I made a couple of “friends” along the way. But even to them, from the beginning, I couldn’t resist myself from saying “I don’t think we’ll remain friends.” But we have, at least for now, and I could say these few people have affected me in ways they don’t understand, in ways I don’t understand. Sure, I still struggle to believe that friendships are lasting, but slowly, I learned how to be comfortable. No one knows if this friendship will last, or if I will ever have better friends than these idiots right now, but I can tell myself once again that these friends will always have a place in my mind, whenever, wherever.