Five years ago, I met a fun and beautiful girl of the same nationality. We met in Lima, across the street from a park that prior to our first encounter, had ordinary qualities. Though, to be historically fair, the park had long ago achieved distinction for being a focal point of artistry and acclaimed by citizens and non-citizens for its lively and safe district, as well as being the only park in the capital to pay homage to an American president( I hope)
Because my place of residence isn't Lima, though not by individual choice, our friendship continued functioning under common technological procedures- online messages, the rare phone call(which I always initiated) and other tactful electronic acknowledgments. For five years, I maintained a sporadic connection with her because fun and beautiful turned out to be very limiting characteristics.
From June to August, the annual trip to see my family in Lima also gave me the opportunity to see friends, which unquestionably meant seeing her. The first two years of our friendship, our encounters were special(to me) and I think of them with affection because the girl I met 5 years ago is astronomically different than the human being of recent years.
After living the best days of my life in the Andes( a singular period of less than two weeks that I'll never relive with the same intensity or liver), I got in contact with her as we had previously agreed to meet again before my departure to the United States, and since I know my feelings of deep elation are exclusive to the southern hemisphere, I desired strongly to see her, and thus end my visit with equal happiness and grace.
Despite agreeing to meet her on my dad's birthday, I anticipated the final reunion with her, her boyfriend and her friends with excitement. Interestingly or perhaps not, a coincidence in timing occurs between the 22nd of august(my dad's birthday) and the next day. Every 23rd, because small but dispersed fragments of optimism in me believe my life has any vocational or existential purpose, I'm required(coerced) to return to North American territory on the very same morning for collegial reasons. Of course I had the right to drink and be very drunk the whole night and if I drank correctly, the next day as well.
In its early stages, this happily anticipated night had every satisfying element of youthful disorder- the public consumption of beer, the indifference toward money(god bless my dad's heart), the drunk driving, the ideal apartment, the belligerent voices speaking and singing in Spanish ( that I slowly gathered were my own lyrical cadence) Then, at some indefinite point, between the laughter and her friend's seemingly professional hospitality, I fucked everything up and consequently accepted that this fun and beautiful girl would voluntary and very rapidly disappear from me altogether.
By fucking everything up( and with the following sentence, I culminate what has become a sorrowful and quasi-apologetic remembrance of a beloved friend above all else) I must detail with painful exactitude the succeeding effects of the death of a friendship: the obstinate clinging to a handful of irrecoverable memories.
