I got together with an acquaintance today. I may have mentioned her before, her name is Tako and she was a co-worker from the China Post several years back. I never attributed much to our acquaintance, although we did converse a bit, even a little bit after our time at the newspaper, and seemed to have some bit of a connection.

Friend? No. Nothing elevated our interactions to the point of being able to call it friendship, despite having shared a lot, including a lot of music.

For the past year, she has been in Australia. Before she left for Australia, she asked if we could meet up. I declined. We're not in such constant contact that I was willing to meet up just to say goodbye, and I told her as much.

If our acquaintance was of any meaning, then we would have been meeting up regularly anyway. I would have known she was thinking of going to Australia! We hadn't been, so if she suddenly wanted to meet up because she was about to leave, fuck that. It's not worth my time or effort. I told her I'd welcome her when she came back.

After a year, she came back for a visit and asked if we could meet, and I expressed that I would not miss an opportunity to meet with her. So we met.

Meeting up with her affirmed any connection we had during our conversations before. She's a special person and I gave as good as advice as I could on life. Is she a friend? No. We met up, we parted and went our separate ways and she won't be occupying any mental space. If I never heard from her again, it wouldn't make any difference.

We spoke freely about anything that occurred to us, and one topic was about my penchant to walk away from any relationship I had; a self-destructive behavior that I don't recommend to anyone who wants to do anything with their lives, and I told her so. She asked me, as a request, not to walk away from her, and my response was easy. No.

My explanation was that I knew myself too well to not be able to promise that, but the truth is, despite whatever connection we seemed to be making, she doesn't come anywhere close to what I have considered a significant friend. If I made a list of the important people in my life, it would be an insult to the other people on the list, from my perspective and reckoning, to include her on it.