My friend (Talldeep)

Her Chinese name literally translates into Talldeep, so be it. I used to think she was the most influential person in my life so far. She probably still is, although I have passed the stage of officially ranking people around me.

I met her through drama club in Renda. She was from “director department” from Central Drama College. Then she was young and I was little. I forgot why I all of a suddenly liked her, since she and I was in two different short plays. One thing was sure. I was quite impressed by her free spirit, and I swear that I had never met a person like her in my life: talking loud, laughing loud, hugging you all the time, talking right to your face rather than reserved, walking like wind, big eyes, pretty, and smart. Most importantly, she paid attention to me, and believed that I had a potential to be great. Today, I feel my impression might just be false. However, the impression really gave me some motivation to be a person I thought she wanted me to be. And here I am, and I hope she have noticed by now.

In my sophomore year, I took a long road trip, biking all the way from Beijing to Tianjin. It took me 12 hours, almost non-stop. My skin took off due to the prolonged exposure to the sun, and my back hurt because keeping in a same position too long. I called Talldeep the same night I arrived. I felt I had achieved something: being somewhat impulsive, passionate, irrational, but happy. As if I had something to prove to her, as if she was my mom and old sister, although I never had such attachment to my real ones. In the following days, I just hung out in Tianjin for a week. I sold my good road bike there and took train back. In totally, I spent less than 100 yuan (plus the money from selling the bike).

Talldeep then disappeared from my life for a while. In my senior year, she was invited back. This time we planed to put on a graduation play: Awakening of Youth. Talldeep talked about this play before, and I was happy to be one of the main characters. In fact, I regard “awakening of youth” is the metaphor of my struggle, as I tried hard to open up myself, to be more intuitive, passionate, speaking of my feeling, be less judgmental and less rational. The battle is still going on, and the blog is also one of the ways I am dealing with it. Anyway, the play was shown one month before graduation. I still think I did not do a great job there. The regrets still haunted me sometimes, as I felt embarrassed every time she mentioned the play. That play became a pity that I could never make up.

I wrote to her once last year when I was in the worst stage of the small depression. My therapist suggested me to write letters to the people who mattered to me. I wrote two: one to my dear grandma and the other to her. In this writing, I suddenly have this crazy thought: maybe I have been in love with her all along. It is very possible, because my rationality could easily convince me that because it was impossible so that I did not love her. But in fact, I did. Complicated. She is exactly the type of woman I will fall in love. But what’s the point here, huh?

Anyway, I eventually took off for the united states, and she married and divorced several times. Last week, I came back from the states and went to Tianjin to see her. She was a little fat now. But she did not seem to be aging. Still laughing loud and happy, still a little self-centric. When we met, she held my hand and hug me. So natural that you couldn’t think of anything sexual. We talked about the past. She told me a lot of my old friends in drama club turned out to be gays. Big deal. I gave her a dvd of my dance. She did not seem to really get what dance meant to me, but she was the closest among all my Chinese friends.

However, the whole trip is not very memorable. Everything is just routine. Maybe I gave the meeting too big an expectation. I wished she would be doing great, having a great husband and have three happy kids. No, that’s not the case. She still stands out, but not the angel in my mind. I feel that Talldeep is now my good friend. I used to give her an aura, but when I grew up myself, the aura is fading and she turns to be not an angel, but just another person like you and me. I think I am in love with a person in mind, a person I made up to make myself a better person. I do not know. It is quite complicated. I think I should be less apologetic about myself being an imperfect actor. Rather, she is an imperfect director too. I still wish her a great life, and I also know that I have grown out of her aura.