Odi-Jo

My best friend from when I was 9 just posted on my Facebook. I say just--what I mean is, she posted early this morning, well, yesterday evening for her, and I now have her telephone number.

I'm pleased, nay, thrilled, nay, ecstatic... and frightened.

She's been the first person I've mentioned, any time in the last 10 years, when asked about my friends. Or elementary school, as a child. Or how I survived the horror of middle school. Or what friendship is. She was, for a couple of years, the glue that held me together, through the unremitting terror of what most people call school.

She was the most popular girl in our class, maybe in our entire year, and she plucked the shyest, nerdiest girl you've ever seen (ME!) off the back wall, from where she was hiding behind everyone else; and she, funny and confident and bright and lovely, befriended that lonely misfit with a child's kindness and enthusiasm and sheer passionate devotion, and we have been best friends, off and on, for most of our lives.

We haven't spoken properly in years. Not since I moved away from my beautiful hometown, to live in, I'm sorry, this shithole known as the Northeast. Oh, it has its charms. Take-aways are quite cheap here. Newcastle's a nice place. Even the very mining village where I live, well, it has some quaint appeal. And yes, I grant you, the people are generally quite friendly (along with being rude and narrow-minded, not knowing the words 'please' and 'thank-you' and not having any inclination to go to university, ever).

But. I'm being unfair, and I know I am. This region's no worse than any other--if anything, the hamlet where I live now is fairly similar to the little town I grew up in (not my hometown, which is quirky and charming and beautiful, but the town in which I actually spent most of my childhood). I don't mind the Northeast. I'm quite proud when Newcastle do well on match day, and I think the local accents are outrageous (fun outrageous, though) and the shopping and higher education and lots of the scenery all seem quite good... I just miss my home.

Most of all, I miss people like Odi-Jo. I haven't seen her in what feels like centuries, and now, I'm going to call her, and what if we have nothing to say to each other? We always listened to different music, and had different taste in boys, and liked different movies and books and pastimes and.... I mean. What we had in common, was the fact that we loved each other, and we were both a little less like cookie-cutter kids than the people we went to school with.

That hasn't changed. She'll always be the coolest girl I've ever met, and I'll always be what people call unique, quirky, weird, or eccentric, depending on how complimentary they want to be... but what if that's not enough, anymore? What if after all these years (okay, like 5, but still) what if, with nothing to unify us, we've simply drifted irrevocably apart? What if, somehow, by moving over here, I've lost my very best childhood friend, forever?

I don't think I could bear it. If I call her, and we chat for a bit and have nothing to say, or if she finds me terribly altered, or if I don't recall the girl I used to know, my heart will just crack, split! right in two. I will cry for days. I will be permanently wounded, if Odi-Jo and I don't still love each other.

It could destroy my faith in God, Fate, Kismet, etc, if she and I don't know each other, if she doesn't love me anymore, if I don't still, in my quiet, passionate way, adore her as I adore all the people I surround myself with... I'm sure she will. I'm sure I will. I love her because she looked out for me when I didn't even know I needed looking after, and she'll love me because I love her, and I am something like unusual, in my way. There will be no great problems, in the Lanlock and Snansnock reunion.

Of course. There's another problem, a very, very minor one, it will cause a hint of embarrassment, no more, but even so I'd like to avoid it if I could--the thing is, I've been living in England for ages, now, and although the English don't think I sound like them, my countrymen tend to have opinions on my new manner of speaking...

What if she thinks my accent is fake and pretentious?