by Aisha Urooj
John's dad worked for a division of the United Nations, which shuttled his family all over the world. They lived in Cambodia, Cyprus, Tunisia, Japan, France, Switzerland; it worked out as such that around every two years it was a different country. John had spend most of his life moving from one place to another. His dad had another reposting somewhere remote and now he had to go from here too.
I cried when John moved, I didn't care to know where he was going, just that he was leaving. He tried his best to console me but I was inconsolable. I wish now I hadn't been so self absorbed. I wish now that I had been stronger and showed empathy for his situation. It couldn't have been easy moving from one place to another, leaving your friends behind and starting anew at another school, each time not knowing how long you would be there. Even though we hadn't said the words to each other, I knew how much he loved me and that leaving me was really hard for him too but being seventeen, he couldn't just leave his family.
Fear made me terribly insecure and my thoughts became grim. How would we be together anymore? How would a seventeen year old boy remember me? I thought that he would surely forget me. He would find another girl with hair rolling like ocean waves.
I felt broken. At sixteen, I didn't or couldn't grasp the concept of a long distance relationship. I didn't want to stay in touch with him that way. Every phone call, every text and every picture made me miss him more. I stopped answering him back. He wasn't near me anymore and my fears would have had me lose him forever.
Fate had something else in store for our young love. After many years, John would finally find me. Til that day came, however, I was fated to listless dates with matches that either felt unromantic in nature or worse, platonic. I didn't know then he would come back into my life. I didn't know then that he never forgot me.
Our ill-fated separation at the time had left me hollow and in tears for a long while. It made Ellie miserable seeing me like this too.
"Cassie! Can you please smile? I can't bear to see you this sad!"
Looking at her concerned face, I try to smile but it was harder to do than I thought.
"What was that?", asks Ellie.
"What was what?"
"That?", She says, pointing to my face.
"I was trying to smile."
"Oh!", she says, then after a short pause, "It looked like you were trying to grimace." She says it seriously. "Or that you are constipated."
That makes me giggle, which sets off Ellie giggling too. We stop giggling after a while.
"Um...Cassie? Remember that day when I thought I had lost Hammy?"
"Hammy? Your pet hamster?", I ask slightly puzzled at her train of thought.
"Yes?"
"Yeah I remember that cute fuzzball. You thought he got accidentally flushed in the bathroom but he just had been hiding in your fuzzy slippers."
"Yes! I had cried so much thinking he was gone and that I couldn't even plan for his funeral", she says remembering sadly. After some thought she asks,"Why do you think he was hiding?"
"Hmm....maybe he didn't like to wear those bowties you made him wear?"
"What? No that can't be the reason! He looked so dashing!... and I wanted to make him look handsome for the lady hamsters!", says Ellie quickly. Next she adds thoughtfully, "But when he went missing, I thought I had lost him forever but he just had been hiding in plain sight and he came back. Maybe John will be back too, you just need to have faith in him. Don't lose hope Cassie."
I am struck by the fact that Ellie compares my heartbreak with John to Hammy. I think back to the frightened little hamster with a bowtie. Ellie's words "dashing" "handsome hamster" echo in my brain and despite my best efforts not to, it makes me smile.
Seeing my dark mood lifted, Ellie looks delighted. "I missed your smile! Oh my dear Cassie, as long as you can think of one happy thought and smile, everything will be ok."
Her thought and her concern for me touches my heart and lessens the pain of my first heartbreak, I don't feel alone in my sadness. I don't want to make her any more miserable for me than she already was so I listen to her advice, but it was very hard for my teenager self, when emotions felt especially magnified, to continue back to normalcy and to keep going to the high school where everything reminded me of him.
I didn't have to stay long after John moved, however, as Ellie had decided to pursue her acting dreams away from high school.
I could barely survive high school with Ellie by my side. John had gone. How in the world could I do it without her? It was an easy decision for me to make and without any hesitation, I support Ellie's idea and plan to drop out of high school along with her. We just had to think of a way to survive telling about our decision to our parents together.
Chapter Eight: A Parent's Heart
Our two sets of parents freaked. Two young girls suddenly dropping out of academia, barely just turned seventeen and not even finishing high school? Unheard of! I was accused of being a lemming to Ellie, willing to follow her blindly to the sea. Ellie was accused of living in a fantasy world. Ellie, being Ellie, was finally able to convince our parents to give us a chance.
She must have inherited her gift to negotiate from her lawyer parents. We had a deal that if we weren't successful within a couple of years (two or three at most), we could go back to finishing our high school diplomas and then go for our university degrees. I could see the decision tearing our parents apart but either it was agreeing to Ellie's proposal or losing us both. They knew how stubborn Ellie could be. They knew I wouldn't leave her for the world. Both Ellie and I talk on the phone to discuss whether or not we had convinced our parents.
"What do you think? Do you think that they will agree?"
"I am pretty sure my parents are going to say yes", says Ellie. "I always win and usually they give in by the seventeenth time I ask them."
"I don't know about my parents...they were pretty worried especially mom. I think it really shocked her."
"You can't back out now Cassie. We need to stay strong...think of the freedom! No more boring classes...we can be on our own exploring the world together!"
"Ellie... I am still thinking about what my mom said. She said that when I was born, it was like her heart started beating outside her chest, outside as me. She doesn't want me to stop being her baby. She can't believe that I want to drop out of school and move out."
"Cassie...it is going to happen sooner or later. You are your own person too and need to understand the world around you and stand up on your own two feet. Sooner or later you will have to stop holding on to your parents' hands and become independent. Deep down, they would want you to follow your heart and happiness. Besides, we have made them a iron-clad promise that we will try out for our dreams and if we weren't successful, we will go back to doing what they want...go to high school and then university."
"Ellie, I am not like you. You are so sure what you want to do in your life, you have always been sure of it...I don't even know what I want to do..."
"Stay with me Cassie and we will figure it out together, like we always do!"
"You know Ellie what my parents said...they said that it gets harder to go back to high school once you leave it in the middle."
"Hmmm...that might be true but it is not like we would go back to the same high school. We could take online courses for the courses that are missing to get our diploma as well."
Ellie was right, I hadn't thought about that option. It makes me feel better.
"So you don't think that it will be hard to go back to studies?"
"No, it won't...it's because we made a promise to our parents. That reason would make it easier to go back."
"So do you think that they will agree Ellie?"
"Yes, absolutely! I am sure they will."
Surprisingly, our parents did agree just as Ellie had predicted. Now that I think about it, both Ellie and I were tremendously fortunate in having parents that were so supportive and who gave us enough freedom to pursue our dream and forge our own paths in life.
It must have been a hard decision for them to make but reluctantly and after much deliberation, they agreed.
Victorious, Ellie and I decidedly set off to pursue her acting career. As for myself, I was to figure out my own purpose in life out there in the real world.
Chapter Nine: Starry-Eyed
Ellie was often the star in our small high school plays. Lovely as Juliet, tragic as Ophelia, elegant as Guinevere. Nearly all the guys in school had a crush on her and all the girls wanted to be her. Her performance would get standing ovations but being the perfectionist that she is she was never satisfied. She wanted more.
She never wanted to go the traditional route of acting: High school drama classes, theatre, then acting roles. No, this was not Ellie. She wanted to star in original works now, at this very moment. Patience was never her forte. She believed in experience and a life fully lived as being the teacher.
She tried for her first auditions while still in high school. She said that homework and tests would interfere with her audition schedule. She was not fully free to attend all the auditions that she wanted. She had some success when she landed a small part in an soft drinks ad. She wanted to be more than just the pretty girl with the soda.
After dropping out of high school, we wanted to move out. Ellie and I decide to go the grownup route and look for our own apartment together, our parents want to help us but Ellie wants to do it on our own.
We finally reach a compromise, between parents and teenagers, for our living arrangement and Ellie' parents help us move into an apartment that they owned on the condition that we would contribute to the rent when we found jobs. Later, as Ellie's stardom grew and I also got more independent, we would move out in our own apartments but for the next few years, we were room mates and besties under one roof.
Initially, Ellie got small roles in movies. At least she was earning something, while I struggled to find a job. Luckily, my parents help with the job search and I get a part-time position as a secretary in an accounting firm of my dad's friend. The work was like watching paint dry but at least I had some money in my pocket.
While working there, during the long down times after tax season, it was increasingly hard for me to keep my eyes open out of the sheer boredom. So to pass the time I would pick up and read the books on finance that were lying around. Luckily, I managed to learn a few things about finance that would fuel my future part-time hobby and interest and even my lifestyle.
Determined, Ellie continues her hustle and works hard to get parts in movies, some of them even garnering some success. Ellie kept looking for a break-out role as so far the movies she was in were not up to par with her expectations. When I saw Ellie's first movie in a small theatre, I had mixed feelings.
"So how was I? How was the movie? What did you think?", Ellie had asked all in one breath.
Ellie's performance was amazing to be sure but something was missing. She could have shown so much more depth but the movie's script didn't take her there. She had it in her to be a surreal and sublime work of art, beyond what mere words and expressions could describe. It was like seeing a Da Vinci masterpiece but etched onto sand, having a transient and sadly, brief existence. You only get a brief glimpse of the masterwork before it is washed away by the incoming ocean tide. Her role had brief glimpses of her brilliance but she still needed the right canvas.
Ellie hadn't found that role yet or was it that the script meant for her hadn't been written? Her movie didn't generate much revenue but she got rave reviews for her part, more and more directors were becoming aware of her young talent and word of mouth was spreading fast.
Chapter Ten: Survival Basics
Life in the real world kinda sucks. Life is struggle..let no one else tell you otherwise. I slowly realize the privileges of home that I had taken for granted.
I miss not having to do my own laundry, get my own food, then cook my own food, dust and clean the house and thousands of other chores that I did do while at home, but not all of them together as when living life like an independent adult. I wish there was a Survival basics 101 class taught in high school.
At least we don't have to worry about living arrangements like real adults (thank goodness!) and I really have the best room mate in the world as Ellie. She is open to whatever idea I suggest, the latest being trying to live life like a minimalist. The only problem is that we are both hopeless at it.
"I really like how we are not wasting our money getting things that we don't need Ellie. Living with less makes life so much stress-free and simple."
"You said it Cassie. We are helping the environment and reducing our global carbon footprint as well. Must do it to save the planet!"
"Yeah, only shopping at thriftstores for clothes is not bad at all. I don't even miss the online massive sales."
"Or the shoe sale that is going on."
"I didn't even know about that."
This is usually how the conversation started, with good intentions, but by the end, both of us will be looking at the websites with the aforementioned sales and then secretly ordering something as well. Both of us would then hide shopping bags in our closets after our online orders arrived. Sigh. At least we were trying.
As a Superstar, Ellie later becomes better at minimizing when she has to travel the world with only two suitcases and gets designers to dress her for free. By then, designers would compete aggressively for Ellie and she made sure to choose sustainable and eco-friendly fashion.
The seeds for the minimalist lifestyle was already sown long before, when we were teenagers trying to be responsible adults.
Chapter Eleven: Fortune Favors the Bold
Ellie didn't pay much attention to looks or concede to the pressures of her industry regarding physical appearances. She wasn't concerned, not that she ever needed to be, as she could make Venus blush in envy at her God-given divine countenance. She accepted the concepts of beauty and youth as being of a fleeting nature, infact, she embraced the idea with open arms. All that mattered to her was perfecting her acting talents irrespective of looks.
I, on the other hand, was not as wise nor as naturally gifted as Ellie was and did not share the same enthusiasm for my impending and inevitable progression to old age.
While brushing my hair one morning, I freaked out when I discovered that I had a grey one. I was near tears at the sight of my grey hair and what I thought was my body's cruel and untimely betrayal to my youth but somehow Ellie found it amusing.
"Ellie, can't you see I am distressed? How could you giggle at a time like this....when your friend is in crisis?," I say, dramatically.
She still finds it funny and continues to giggle.
"Elllie, why are you giggling? Stop it, It is not funny!"
"Oh Cassie, can't you see? You will grow old....then I will grow old. We will both grow old and wrinkly together," She says laughing. "We will have so much fun! We will become the two crackling old grannies, terrifying our adult children and plotting away and meddling in the lives of our young grandkids."
I am horrified by the thought of going completely grey. And old. And wrinkly.
I want to be angry at Ellie but I find that her delirium is contagious. Dangerously contagious. I see her unrestrained mirth and laughter and her twinkling blue eyes, forgetting my own neuroses for a little while, I start to laugh with her too.
Dinner that night was the same as the two nights before. It was the one item that I could make without burning: sandwiches. You see that my culinary expertise is limited to Peanut Butter & Jelly sandwiches expertly served and presented, in the optional shapes of either triangles, rectangles or squares. Looking at our familiar dinner option, Ellie wants to order takeout.
"Should we order Chinese or Indian?", I ask.
"Neither, we should go for Sushi. What do you think?"
"Sure we could...you know that Sushi is my middle name!"
"Really? I thought that it was PB&J", jokes Ellie
"Ha ha, very funny Eleanor."
"We should
order calamari too!"
I think about our budget and do a quick calculation in my head. "But Ellie, that would be expensive..."
"Fine, let us only get calamari then!"
I pause to think. In the battle between being practical, staying on budgets and weekly quotas and the battle cry of our stomachs, hunger emerges the clear winner. I hear my stomach growling impatiently.
I quickly make a note in my mental to-do list to allocate a bigger room in our budget for emergency takeout situations and in the future, to devise a better plan that stays on budget when hungry. I reach for the phone to order our food.
Somehow we ended up ordering from all three takeouts, our dinner table a visual and olfactory cacophony of Indian, Chinese and Japanese cuisines. After consuming an outrageous amount of food, that even I am embarassed to think about, I reach for the fortune cookie from the takeout box to read my fortune. I am horrified at the words on the paper.
"Fortune favors the old?!," I wail. "I knew it...that grey hair from this morning was an omen! I am an antique", I say miserably.
"Fortune favors the old? That doesn't sound right, let me see that paper", says Ellie reaching for my fortune slip.
"Of course it is not right! I don't want to be favored only when I get old", I continue lamenting.
"Cassie, there is a crease right there...see? It says bold. Fortune favors the bold", Ellie corrects me.
"Really?.....What do you think that means?", I ask Ellie.
"Hmm maybe it means that you should try a different flavor jelly for your PB&J sandwich? You know, boldly switch it up and go where you have never gone before, on a dangerous culinary adventure with a new sandwich combination?"
"You are funny", I say sardonically, but by now fully recovered from my fortune cookie meltdown.
"What does your say?"
"It says that 'anxiety won't help your future or solve your problems. Only true happiness sets us free'."
