Let me tell you of this guy I use to know. He was this chubby, acne filled thing, that had long arms and generated an insane amount of humour that we didn't know was a product of genuine wit or just plain lack of intellect (I steadfastly claim the first).

He was also my seatmate. My partner in crime. The younger brother I never really had but was reluctantly blessed to be given anyway.

He's the person I spent most of my school days not studying with. The person who caused me a great deal of pain, because it actually really really hurts to stop yourself from laughing hysterically and rather idiotically in a quiet classroom.

He's the reason I had so many death stares from my teacher, who went through a lot of trouble in keeping us separated. But who was one to deal with magnetic forces?

But one day she couldn't stand us anymore and she did just that. We were thrown to opposite corners of the classroom. He wrote me a note, which he sent to me in the most conspicuous of ways. It read:

Dear Karlyn
My sun of my day
The moon of my night
Although my eyes are blinded with love
My mouth speak the truth
Has the cunning vile viper torn us far apart?
NAY! Never from my heart. 

- Shakespear. Sn.

That note incidentally caused us a great deal more trouble. Because my teacher read it. But even she couldn't do anything more than sigh exasperatingly at us, throw her hands up in the air and walk away muttering "vile viper indeed."

I swear I saw a hint of a smile as she sat down.

It made him a legend. We were friends through and through. He told me his problems with a girl. And I told him my problems with life (yes ever the dramatic one).

When I graduated from school, I didn't look back. Mostly because there were other people in school I was leaving that I would waste no second glances on. Also because I realized that he and I, were the kind of friends who were great friends just because we had to see each other everyday, five times a week. But nothing more than that. Convenient friends.

More than hi bye friends, less than best friends forever.

So I didn't see him for the next, five years or so.

And when I did.

It was because his dad had just passed away.

I was 22. He was 18.

It's too early, too tragic to be happening now. But then again, isn't it always.

Watching him and his family, struggle so hard just to manage the few words they needed to say to pay respect to the greatest man in their life, watching them having to display such raw grief in front of so many people, watching him having to grow up several years in the space of a few hours...these are the moments that break us into something more.

Near the end, as I went to see him to express my condolences, he saw me first. And before I could speak, he reached out to me. And grabbed onto me.

When he hugged me, it was the clutching of a still small boy with big dreams.

It was my same friend. That chubby boy who never made me stop laughing. And got me into trouble over and over.

And at the same time, it wasn't. Taller, older, wiser. Not so shy. Not so chubby. Not so him.

But more broken. Broken into beautiful.

Cos that's what life is. It's the shittiest moments and the funniest moments and the moments that we wished we could revisit and the times we wish we could remember to forget.

Cos everything is broken into beautiful. You and I, our past and our present and all the space between all that we are and all that we want to be.