HER: Johor Bahru

You know you can no longer have your arms around her shoulder or pushed her onto the ground because she had become a lady.

You’ll still see her every now and then. And you guys would do a variety of different thing together. She’s like that strange BFF that your friends wondered why didn’t you 2 became a couple.

Some days you’ll go cafe hopping together, some days just for ice cream or movies, some nights you just head out for supper, where you'll complain that's unhealthy, but you would go anyway.

She’s always a part of my life. When I am young, she would bring me to my aunts, hung out with my closest maternal cousins. We played Basketball in an unfinished estate by a concrete court, play bubble guns and run in circles with their dog. I’ll wake up early and tune in to static channels which amuses me all the time because back then I was 7 years old and naive.

And she grew up with me. I’d seen her countless times. From the days where I had issues with self-identity, we read comics together, tear and fold paper planes with magazines, building a blanket fort.

We would spend nights talking about our insecurities, and I told even her the first girl I had a crush on and she laughed at me while poking the top of my nose, as if an older sister.

But like most friendship, there’s a time where we lost touch. I was so caught up with trying to fit in.

I thought it’ll be cool to not hang out with Johor anymore. And it hurts me whenever we walked passed each other and I didn’t even look at her in the eyes.

We got back in touch again when I saw her while I was out by myself. This time we finally caught up with each other’s life.

She’s wearing a TESCO choker and IKEA sling bag. Her Legoland keychain dangles freely by the zipper. And she was wearing a floral dress by Kuso.

She just graduated from dentistry, but she is ironically still afraid of the Dentist, just like the old times. She also doubles as an estate agent. Like me, sometimes she enjoys seeing the outside world.

Johor is pretty jumpy too. I remember how scared she is when I scared her while we were watching horror movies.

And Johor is always somebody I’ll never say goodbye with.

Because I’ll always see her again.