on the other hand...

My best friend, Danielle, and I have known each other for a little over ten years now. We have been best friends for almost that entire amount of time, having met on the freshman basketball team at our high school back home in Antioch, California. We have very similar backgrounds: raised by Asian parents in a suburban town outside a large, diverse, metropolitan city; upper-middle class; parents married; one younger sibling; college educated. For the majority of our adolescent and adult lives, we were given the exact same opportunities from almost the exact same sources. And yet, we are completely different people.

I can't say exactly why or how Danielle and I ended up being such good friends. Our first real encounter happened after a scuffle on the basketball court, in which I tore off about half of Danielle's thumb nail that she used to slice open my bottom lip. As we iced our wounds, we bonded over the fact that neither of us are particularly aggressive people. Okay, well, maybe Danielle is a little bit aggressive. Me, not so much. But anyway, from that point on, we became inseparable for the better part of the next four years.

As we grew up, we learned a lot about ourselves through the other. That's what good friends are for, I suppose: to educate you about the characteristics you have that you cannot see - or choose not to see - yourself. The older we got, the more I came to understand why I needed her in my life. Danielle is almost my polar opposite. What I lack in myself, I have in her. And having her in my life reminds me that while I am a good person, I am made better by those who love me and whom I love. Her achievements inspire me, and her struggles provide perspective to my own. Life is a complicated thing, and every one of us approaches it differently.

We talked yesterday about boys, the ones we love and the ones who hurt us. Who, ironically, often turn out to be the same people. Despite being 3,000 miles away from me and a complete stranger to the people I tell her stories about, I realized that she is the one person, other than myself, who completely understands why I am going through. A lot of it can be attributed to our history; she is the only one on this earth who actually knows my entire life story, without a single detail spared, no matter how gruesome it may be. But aside from that, her life experiences have almost always reflected the flip side of our friendship coin.

Danielle has spent the last four years trying to negotiate the battle between her head and heart. For her, her heart always seems to win, regardless of the consequences of the matter. I, on the other hand, have spent the last four months trying to negotiate a similar battle between my head and heart, and because of my own different set of insecurities, I never let my heart have any say. She told me, "I gave him chance after chance after chance... And I let myself get walked all over because I loved him." As she said this, I heard my own conscience ask, "What about you? You are so scared of getting walked all over that you don't give anyone a chance to love you."

Well damn.

That's the trouble with love. How do you find that in-between place where you can let down your guard without letting go of who you are? I wish I had the answers.

I honestly have no idea where this post is going... I just have some very mixed feelings about a recent decision I made, and writing seems to be the best way to sort things out at the moment.

And on a completely unrelated, but important, note: Remember that you can't help who you fall for. Chemistry is a powerful thing.