Find a friend

A friend, five or six years haven't seen, completely lost contact. Sometimes, I will think of him, search his name on Baidu, but the name is too common, such as the tide of information, I always can't tell which is his.

One day, I got an email from him. Legendily, he happened to see an article I wrote, one of the details only we know, so, he decided that the pen name hidden behind an old friend, he searched the pen name, find my email. Then we found out we'd been living in the same city all along. And then, halfway across town, the two meet on a stormy day.

We've both played a big part in each other's lives, but we forget why. "One day, I dial your mobile phone, found that the machine stopped, this just found a long time no contact." He said. I scratched my head. "Me too." When we parted, we agreed that we would never disrespect each other again. He said, "In this city, you are the person I have known the longest."

Another friend, haven'T seen for a long time, contact information are in, but the phone never shut down, QQ avatar never light, so a go for three years. One night, I received a private message on Weibo. It was just four words: "It's me, Rose." Rose is not her real name, but her ID from the school forum. Remember 2004 when we met for the first time -- around a big round table, separated by a bunch of people, I put the ID and the real person on, pleasantly Shouting "rose", "rose".

The next day, in a quiet teahouse, we chicken mouth duck mouth to explain all these years happened. She suddenly put down her chopsticks and said she got divorced as early as three years ago. Just want to comfort, she waved her hand, "during that time, I was a little self-closed, now come out, to bring back my old friends one by one." She winked and showed me a picture of her new boyfriend on her phone.

And a friend. In college, we were each other's shadows, and after graduation, she went back to her hometown. Once a year, I would go back to my hometown to ask her out on a symbolic date, but my hometown and her city were several hours' drive away, and we made appointments and missed appointments and missed appointments because those hours dragged on for eight years.

One afternoon during a nap, I patted the bed board and suddenly felt as if she were still in my lower bunk. Back home again, we make an appointment, time, place again difficult to schedule, she said: "if too busy, next time." Not next time, I thought, and turned around and went to the coach station. Seven hours back and forth, less than five hours together. In five hours, I was busy meeting her husband and son, eating at a restaurant owned by her relatives, and listening to her talk about how her senior year of high school had just ended, and how everything was calm and trivial like it was yesterday. Until the departure, sitting on the bench in the waiting room, I have no reason to say: "In this life, I besides my husband only you." She was quiet for a moment. "My husband changed several shirts when he heard you were coming. He knows how important you are to me..."

On the way home, I texted her: "Never lost, but always feel like I found you again."

In the days of single-mindedly moving forward, we unknowingly lost friends who we didn't care about at the time. Gradually, life is stable, there is always a moment, we want to see the way, but there is no reference. Want to recall their initial appearance, can be a common speaker no two or three, even their own are a little hesitant. Then, those old friendships become a prescription to maintain inner peace and stability. Finding them and being found by them is like returning to an order in which we belong, warm and steady.

The bus twists and turns in the mountainous area, round and round, I open the mobile phone, update Weibo: "to be like the swallow mud, the old friends one by one back." After a while, someone replied, "Unfortunately, I threw away my old friends one by one like a bear breaking off a stick."

Well, most of us are doing the same thing about friendship.