It was a regular afternoon at the cafe I was working at. The initial anxiety that I felt at the beginning of each shift had subsided and I was looking forward to my best friend dropping - having a friendly face in a (mildly) hostile workplace.
As soon as she walked into the cafe with her boyfriend and exchanged excited smiles with me, my mildly inappropriate manager asked, as he usually did when my friends popped by, "is that your friend?".
"Yes", proud that I could show the people I worked with that I had a lot of friends and wasn't just the submissive, subservient, apologetic waitress that the FnB industry had demanded I be.
"She's beautiful."
And my heart sank.
I always knew she was beautiful. People in school who didn't really know her but were friends with me never failed to go on (to me or otherwise) about her "hot body", "great hair" and whatever other synonym for beautiful that you could think of.
In school it didn't really bother me. The multiple boys that were interested in her were never my type, and we were clad in unflattering combinations of our school uniform, so I knew my true potential wasn't being unleashed.
Okay I am literally lying to you guys. It fucking bothered me. And made me feel invisible on multiple occasions.
We are/were so close, I knew people associated us with each other and because of that, I felt like everyone was constantly drawing comparisons between our beauty (her abundance and my lack thereof).
There were times I thought it was just in my head, that people weren't that superficial, but then there was, let's call him, T.
This was maybe the first of many instances that I would later use in my head as empirical evidence that the world favoured the beautiful.
T was a cool dude - sporty, good looking, aloof enough that you'd feel honoured that he paid you any attention. We were in the same class and I guess he realised that I was pretty funny and smart. He started picking on the small things I said in class, and making fun of me - the kind of thing that makes you feel noticed. Don't get me wrong, I was very noticed in school, but male attention (I think you'll start to notice a pattern here) was different. It was a whole new level of empowering. I could get good grades, I could be the funniest person in class, occupy several leadership positions, but the one thing that always gets me is attention from the male species.
And I wasn't the only one who noticed this budding, unlikely friendship. People I barely knew would come up to me and ask my about my friendship with him, I could feel my social capital increasing.
But this wasn't just a shiny friendship that I could show off to people. This was the first time I had made a close, heterosexual male friend. A substantial friendship. I remember that this was around the time that my family was starting to become dysfunctional. One day, I was clearing our class recycling bin, trying to occupy and distract myself during a free period. I think he sensed that I was troubled, so he ran up behind me as I went downstairs to the recycling bin. I was 15 then but I can honestly say that it was one of the first genuine conversations I had had with a guy. I told him about my problems and he was sufficiently reassuring and nice.
It's possible that I'm looking at this with severely rose-tinted glasses but this is what my adolescent self felt.
Before this friendship could flourish into something more, things got complicated.
Me, T and my best friend started hanging out together. I realised that he was gradually paying more attention to her. Suddenly she was not just prettier than me but also funnier, more engaging, more interesting, more fun. Soon, they were hanging out without me. I'd like to emphasise that she is in no way evil. He was the one who was instigating everything and she was just reciprocating. But in my fragile state, I blamed her. I remember thinking, "If you care about me so much, why would you do this? Why can't you just not hang out with him?"
These are feelings from almost half a decade ago, but as much as I hate to admit it, I think I still carry a semblance of it with me. For a long time I couldn't shake the thought that guys only wanted to be friends with girls that they were attracted to. I only learnt otherwise in my first year of University where I met my now closest male friend who I love so so much.
My best friend and I got over the incident with T. One morning, when I sad in bed, she and another friend came over to my house with packets of Nasi Lemak and talked things out. We had honest and difficult conversations. I forgot why but her friendship with T fizzled out - partly due to me and partly due to the fact that he wasn't actually that great.
I know this whole post feels like I'm victimising myself. I can't apologise for that because this is how I earnestly felt.
If I'm being honest (trick statement, I'm always honest y'all), I don't think I can ever get rid of the feeling. Being jealous that every dude she comes into contact with ends up liking her to some extent, comparing my experiences against hers, trivialising her issues just a little bit because at the end of the day, hey at least you're pretty. I acknowledge that this is terrible with a capital T (pun not intended... or was it?).
At my worst, I shouted at her "what is it like to be so beautiful?" - an honest plea, genuinely wanting to know how it felt, but also wanting her to feel bad about it.
It sounds cliched but it is so easy to focus on the bad things. To let these feelings of inadequacy eclipse everything else, to let it gnaw at you, to let it corrode a wonderful friendship that has shaped me into the person that I am.
This poetically structured conclusion may sound cursory in comparison to the detailed anecdote I've penned above, but I think it captures how simple things really are when your vision is less myopic and you do not fixate on beauty:
My best friend is beautiful. She is objectively more beautiful than me. This is a fact.
My best friend is one of the best things that has ever happened to me. I cannot live without her. This is a fact.
My best friend is my family. I would not be the person I am today without her. This is a fact.
My best friend is incredibly kind and generous to me. We will continue to be best friends until death do us part. This is a fact.
My best friend is beautiful. I am beautiful. This is a fact.
