Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash.
Me and my best friend Kisa couldn’t be more different. I don’t know how else to capture it except with this: she’s a warm ray of sun on a lovely August afternoon, and I’m the permanent threat of rain on a cold June morning.
I like to joke that Kisa is an angel on earth and I’m just a goblin that snuck past the gates.
These differences were harder to see when we were children. Back then, it was simple. We liked the same things. That was enough. We were both obsessed with the colour purple. We watched Mew Mew Power on repeat. We thought we’d both marry Julian from the Famous Five. And we agreed that journalling was the cure to all of life’s ailments.
She gave me my first journal. An A5 Valentine-red one with a flimsy lock that could be snapped open in seconds. I filled it with the weight of a heavy childhood and the early traces of what would become a heavy mind. Eventually, I burned it, something I fully regret until now. I thought if I erased it from existence, it would go together with all the memories but in so doing I got rid of the first gift I ever got from a best friend. Life would have been better if I had just kept the journal and told her what the full details of what was going on. She wouldn’t have been able to fix it. But she’d have been there. As she always has.
I think even back then, I knew we were fundamentally different. And as we grew up, those differences sharpened. My tastes darkened. My jokes became more twisted. My thoughts more jaded. She stayed the same – soft, warm and sunshine yellow.
Maybe you think this is where the story turns. Where the distance becomes too great, and we fall out. But we never did. For nineteen years, she’s remained one of the constants in my life. She’s told me all her lovely dreams. I’ve told her the nightmares that haunt me at night. We’ve gone on many dates. Been there through all the milestones and escorted each other down the different paths we’ve taken. We’ve found a rhythm, even if we’re not dancing to the same tune anymore. It’s nice and comforting to know that after all these years, someone as lovely and wholesome and warm as her can call me her best friend with pride.
*
Last year in August, she got me another journal. An academic planner that runs from July 2024 to August 2025. I couldn’t use it for daily journalling (I like those to run January to December), but I didn’t want it to go to waste. I told her I’d make it a prompt journal. To my surprise, she said she wanted to do it with me.
Kisa and I don’t talk every day. After nineteen years, there’s not much left to say except:
“Hi. Here’s a reel.”
“I saw someone in ShopRite who might be the love of my life.”
“Please update that story you’ve been writing.”
But that’s changed a little. Every few days, one of us sends the other a prompt. Something scavenged from the depths of some clunky website. We don’t check up on each other to make sure we’ve written. We don’t follow up. But when she sends one, or responds to mine, something in me softens and stirs.
The sites we use aren’t built for us. The prompts repeat. The UX is painful. I couldn’t find an app that worked or a site that felt right. And eventually, I thought, why not just build something better? Something simple and lovely. Something for us. Something for her.
And so I did – well I paid somebody to do it because I cannot code at all but still.
*
I often think of a post I once read about Dr. William Halstead, who invented the first rubber gloves for his wife so her hands wouldn’t be burned by the chemicals she handled in surgery. The writer of that post said, “I loved her to the point of invention.” And I remember thinking, what a beautiful kind of love.
When I think of Kisa, of how even in my darkest moments I can close my eyes and see her warm and constant, how this tiny act of writing beside her, across time and space, helps me feel less alone, I understand that love. It overwhelms me just how much love there is between us. How lifelong it is despite all the differences. Or maybe, because of?
I made this for her.
Because of her.
It makes me happy to know I have loved someone to the point of invention.
(Funny that she’s an iOS user and I haven’t figured that out yet).
