Some people aren't so lucky to have a childhood worth remembering. All they want to do is skip that part and move on to adulthood.
Well, fortunately I am not one of those people.
I don't know if I qualify as an adult or a semi-adult but I go to sleep every night and all I want is to be a child again.
My childhood holds a whole lot of beautiful memories and on the plus side, it was a time when things were so much easier.
I wasn't the most outgoing type. My favorite thing to do was play all day with my barbie dolls, my dad bought me the whole Barbie playhouse.
So it's safe to say I didn't have that many friends.
Now, I think I've written enough stories about how averagely smart I am. For this reason, the teachers in my primary school advised my parents to allow me skip two grades.
It was just a trial exam into secondary school. As expected I passed.
My mum was reluctant at first letting me go off to secondary school at the age of eight, almost turning nine but eventually she did.
So there I was, the youngest girl in my class.
Back then, we all existed in a vortex, most kids went to the same primary school then proceeded to the same secondary school.
The people I had to attach seniors to their names just a few months ago were now my classmates. It was scary as hell.
I looked around, everyone was mixing. It was so easy for them while I was the girl two classes below.
I sat all alone and that was when she came to sit next to me.
Arimi Fathia
I can never forget her name.
We were in the same primary school but I had never spoken a single word to her. There she was smiling at me, trying to make conversation.
I wasn't much of a talker so it wasn't the easiest thing to do, following the conversation up.
After a while I warmed up to her, then she introduced me to her or our classmates.
Turns out everyone knew who I was. Not because I was popular or anything. My older brother was the senior prefect in our primary school before he graduated so everyone knew me as his sister.
Fathia and I were inseparable after that. She protected me, like a mother hen because I was too unripe for secondary school.
The years went on like that. You couldn't see me without me and vice versa.
It was war in school when they placed us in different inter house teams.
Because my P.E teacher didn't like stress, he succumbed and we both ended up in yellow house together.
Yellow house took last place.
Things were going great. It's not hard surviving on your own in school. You need a clique even if it's just a clique of two and that was me and Fathia.
All good things must come to an end. Ours did when she announced that she was moving away and switching schools.
I think that was the first time I experienced heartbreak.
It was inevitable. None of us could stop it. The most annoying part of it was that everyone kept asking, teachers included, "Now that Fathia is going, how will you do it?"
How was I supposed to know?
She moved away and I never saw my best friend again.
Fathia always found a way. Cell Phones weren't rampant that time for children our age so she started writing me letters.
I lost count of how many letters we exchanged during that time.
We exhausted notebooks after notebooks.
The letters stopped eventually, after which I took a page out of her book and moved to a whole new state entirely.
We stopped talking totally.
Over the years, I tried searching for her on Facebook, asking former friends of friends but no one heard from her.
The boy that gave the letters I wrote to his brother who attended the same school as Fathia was the only one that told me Fathia switched schools again and no one knew where she went.
Many years have gone by and I still miss her. Maybe not as much as I did ten years ago.
So much time has passed.
If I ever do see Fathia again, I'm going to give her the biggest hug ever known to the world and say thank you.
Simply thank you for just being my friend.
I would have probably sat all alone in that chair and it would have taken me ages to say a single hello to anyone.
I was a very shy girl, topping with the fact that they were all intimidating and older.
Fathia is pretty hard to forget. I told her I had a huge crush on a boy and she made sure we both played the leading roles in a drama so I could talk to him.
She was simply the best.
I keep hearing people say it's a really small world. Geographically, the world is a really big place.
Maybe, just, maybe, I will get to meet Fathia again.
That happening might just be the reason I finally believe that it is indeed a really small world.