My Best Friend’s Wedding
It happened yesterday. I had not realized how privileged I was being asked to be my friend’s maid of honour until yesterday during the wedding, when I finally realized how important my position was during the course of event. It’s perhaps quite overwhelming for me as I am not used to being a part of my friends’ lives. I have moved around too much. I thought I was already forgotten by most people. I feel guilty sometimes for not being there for my friends. Maybe that’s the reason why that even though I have many really good friends who I kept in touch with via e-mails etc., I never thought someone actually could take me as her best friend.
She’s a friend that I met since high school. Because of her wedding I met some people from high school again. Since coming “back” to Canada I made a conscious effort the last few months not to make a big deal about “feeling different” or being way too “cosmopolitan” than the people that I meet locally. I have tried to meet friends, get to know them, try not to think that their experiences not interesting enough. I have made some progress but seeing people that I used to know again made me depressed again.
It’s one thing about the expectation to be the same as everyone else. It’s another thing to see that these people’s lives have never changed! I remember hanging out with similar types of people when I was in high school. They are children of immigrants from Hong Kong around the same period of time. They enjoyed going to karaoke, listen to really boring and cheesy (that’s my humble opinion) HK pop songs, follow HK trends, while having developed a taste for Canadian hockey, etc. I used to try to fit in by listening to the same songs and developing similar hobbies, because I felt obliged to hang out with certain groups of friends just because I was perceived to be similar to them just simply because I was from HK.
Now that I have lived in other places in different parts of the world. Now that I have friends scattered all over the globe. Now that I listen to a variety of music (my ipod collection is multilingual). I feel a great sense of loneliness how I see these old acquaintances again. I don’t know what it is exactly; perhaps if I never saw them again I would not realize how much I have grown apart with people that I used to know. Perhaps when I first left those people I felt like I could go back to them but now I realize that they are only my past…
When I realized that the pastor have traveled quite a bit and have lived in different parts of the world before, I was quite excited and chatted with him about his experiences, but obviously other people got bored. So I switched the conversation around and started chatting with this girl about the Carribbean cruise that she would be going, and tried to sound interested. For me, a cruise trip is nice vacationing but can never measure up to backpacking, and definitely not comparable to living in another country/becoming part of another culture…
I have been thinking about moving again. Canada is a nice place, but, do I really have to settle here?! Anyway, wonder who will come to MY wedding in the future since all my friends seem to be so far away.
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3 Comments to “My Best Friend’s Wedding”
July 8th, 2008 at 11:46 am
Thanks for sharing this with us. I guess the wedding itself proceeded without a hitch?
I’ve been to some weddings where there was some serious drama behind the scenes, i.e. on the way back home in the car, the father was angry and ranting and the mother of the bride was weeping saying she should never have let her daughter marry such a man, i.e. the bridegroom couldn’t handle his alcohol and was so drunk he couldn’t stand up to give his speech and the bride (my dear friend) had to do it for him :p
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July 9th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
hehe I can definitively relate. Though, sometimes I wonder what became of friends I lost touch with but I do not regret leaving them behind. Does that make me sound like a heartless person? Haha, I tried liking canadian hockey once because everyone was obssessed with it… Didnt really work.
How was the wedding itself though?
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July 10th, 2008 at 8:44 pm
Hi Ayako and nomad, thanks for asking. The wedding turned out great and I am happy for my friend. (Even though sometimes I doubt if my friend’s really happy since she seemed withdrawn from the groom during the wedding… but nothing as dramatic as what you described, Ayako). When I think about it, it seems like I was whining a bit when I wrote that post. Guess I was tired of “not belonging” or trying hard to belong. Though I will keep on trying to just think of people as people and not put too much emphasis on feeling different.
Nomad, I know what you mean by trying to like Canadian hockey. I did the same before. It’s such a great way to build rapport with people here… much better than talking about the weather.
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